4th Round

The situation weel into the game. Keith and Schwerin are on their way to Saxony from Silesia. Further up north, Russia helds most of its objectives and has Dohna cornered.

Being one of the favourites for this tournament and also one of the best classified players up to this round, Christian Blattner was unfortunate to suffer an early debacle as the Prussians in this game, as a consequence of forgetting to buy back some troops during a critical move. He faced Russia (Guy Atkinson) in hearts and clubs, and held on to East Prussia for many rounds.  Before Richard Sivél, who esa playing Austria, he managed for Keith and Schwerin to evacuate Silesia and meet King Frederick in Saxony to concentrate in its defense. In the end, Russia won in the 11th round. Just one more round would have been enough for Christian to reach the final.

The Austrian supply train is blocked. Please don’t try this at home.

This game was dominated by the Prussians under Alex Calderón, who employed some unorthodox tactics that can only be qualified as “Offensive withour the Offensive Option”. Right from the beginning and during many rounds, Alex threw the blue pieces in a rampage throughout the Austrian territory, chasing after the white pieces under Andreas Zölitz. He thus managed to block one of the Austrian supply trains for several rounds, and leave his adversaries in a state of schock, under the impression that he had the best card hand (he had 5 reserves in it) in spite of the subsidy reductions in rounds 9 and 10. The only player left unimpressed by this profligate display was Andrew Brown, who kept insisting with his Russians, leading several attacks, in spite of which Alex managed to score a victory in round 20.

The Prussian offensive is about to succeed right at the time of the colapse of its supply.

Ready to do or die, José Manuel decided to unleash an Offensive Option with Prussia. He almost made it. His supply in Austrian territory went critical right when he could have taken the last objectives, and then he forgot to cover Trautenau. But for this mistake, everything would have been resolved in a final battle on spades. This being the strongest suit in John McCullough’s (Austria) hand, the result would have been a very close run thing, either way. The beneficiary of this Prussian focus with Austria was Ruben Martin, who achieved victory with France in round 10.

Bjorn placates his thirst at the beginning of the game while Maurice makes his move with France.

The Tsarina’s early death (round 6) happened before David Fernández’s Russians could mount any kind of serious attack on Prussia. This facilitated Bjorn von Knorring’s game with Prussia. The truth is that Austria (Ty Wyman) finished this game with few objectives taken, himself forced onto the defensive by Prussia’s plentiful card hand. France was the only ally able to score a significant result, with 8 objectives captured. Bjorn ended the game with an apparently effortless victory in round 18.