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OTTERBURN END-GAME STATEMENTS
GM:
Brian Frew
Started: May 2001
Finished: November 2001 (Spring 1906).
Result: 4 way EFIR draw by player agreement.
| Country | Player | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | Result | | Austria | Iain Sankey | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Eliminated (A05) | | England | Max Kinman | 5 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 8 | Drew | | France | France: Marc Priest | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 9 | Drew | | Germany | Germany: Anthony Ling | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | Eliminated (05) | | Italy | Italy: Mike Dean | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 1 | Drew | | Russia | Russia: Dirk Kessler | 6 | 7 | 9 | 7 | 10 | Drew | | Turkey | Turkey: Tone Kouly | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | Eliminated (S06) |
FRANCE (France: Marc Priest) The most interesting part of the start of Otterburn for me was being France
to Max's England. Max and I had both played in Wisteria as Austria (Max)
and Italy (me) and I had horribly stabbed and destroyed Max. Therefore my
biggest priority was to avoid an all out war with England and win his
trust. I therefore decided with some prompting from Germany to go for the
Iberian opening and be as pacifistic as possible for the first move or so.
Encouragingly everyone was writing - although Austria was fairly quiet. Max
said he would go north, Italy and I agreed to have a DMZ and Germany and I
were talking about a delayed attack on Germany.
The first adjudication changed things a bit. Italy was in the Tyrol and
England was in the channel. I therefore kept talking to Germany and tried
to persuade Max to leave Berlin alone. Austria and Italy clammed up and didn't write anything.
The next adjudication was interesting - Turkey and Russia revealed their
juggernaut, Germany NMR'd which was a surprise and Italy took Munich.
Fortunately Max did go for Belgium and was starting to look less
threatening.
The Spring 1902 Diplomacy was interesting. I'd covered Brest and so had had
to build a fleet in Marseilles rather than Brest. Mike (Italy) went ape
about this, despite my re-assurances. Meanwhile I was busy pointing out the
danger of the juggernaut to anyone who would listen (mostly Max). This move
saw Italy, Russia and Turkey going for Austria with teh usual results. This
was not helped by no Diplomacy from Austria. I attempted to get F Por into
the MAO, only to have it bounced by England.
Autumn 1902 saw me banging on about the Juggernaut, which was crushing the Austrians with Italian help. Max and I had now realised that we had to work together to stop this. I did try to see if we could include Germany, but
there was no easy way to do so. Max was engaged in a fight for Scandinavia
and was doing well - helped by Russian mistakes in his build. Meanwhile
Mike was helping the juggernaut and not writing much.
So in 1903, the Franco-English counter-juggernaut was unleashed. I swung my
fleets into the Med and moved my armies against Germany. Max continued his
battlle for Scandinavia and also moved forces against Germany. The game
basically then polarised into two alliances with Germany and Italy stuck in
the middle.
To his credit, Turkey did try to liven things up by attacking Russia, but
made a mess of his orders and so didn't get very far.
It would have been interesting to see how things went if Turkey had kept
playing - there were still possibilities for switching alliances - although
Max and I had got things to the point where neither of us could seriously
stab each other. However with the proxy of Turkey to Russia, a draw was the
best option - a shame (an NMR might have been better).
So thanks to everyone for playing. Especial thanks to Max for being a
staunch ally when the going got tough and being prepared to feed me a build
at an important moment - I think we both realised we had to stop the
juggernaut or die. Also thanks to Brian for GMing.
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ITALY (Italy: Mike Dean) Thanks for an "interesting" game guys and thanks to Brian Frew for GMing. My game end statement may not appear until the Christmas period or even the new year due to pressures of work and trying to keep psychopath going! Hope you understand. IF I do get some free time when I can do a game end statement before then I will do so. Special thanks to Marc for deciding I did deserve to be a part of the draw. Regards,
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RUSSIA (Russia: Dirk Kessler) At first I want to thank Brian for adjucating the game. Although some errors
occured in the adjudication, he quickly corrected them. Thanks also to the
other players, especially those who negotiated through the whole game.
Initial diplomacy in this game was easy. Three players (Iain, Tony and Mike)
did not negotiate or were only sending some standard phrases. I therefore
decided to attack Austria or Germany. I sent a letter to France to talk
about an early Russian attack on Germany and inbetween 12 hours Austria and Germany knew about this letter: it was clear, that France wasn't trustworthy at all.
Then Turkey made an offer, that Russia couldn't deny, and the juggernaut was
planned with Austria as its natural enemy. My problem was, that I became the
feared early leader and I had to prevent, that everybody turned against me.
The senseless English attacks on France made me suspicious about a phony war between them. I offered Germany every help I could give and Germany mostly executed my order proposals. Nevertheless Tony decided to leave the game, so the Western alliance easily conquered Germany.
In Scandinavia England turned against me. At first I wanted to defend only,
because I didn't want to grow at that time. When England moved nearly all of
ity units north I planned to build a second fleet in StP sc, but I wrote a
fatal misorder. The result were many turns of swapping centers in
Scandinavia. Max showed, that he wasn't a really great tactician, so three
Russian units could defend against five or six English units. England
definitely could have done better: pick up one center, secure it and bring
your other units into their best position, then take the next center! Give
always retreat orders!
In the south Italy made it very easy. Without any negotiation with Russia
Italy attacked Austria and made an easy success on the Balkan possible.
Thanks to Mike!
The problem of the juggernaut quickly became apparent: Russia grew fast and
Turkey was nearly stalemated by Italy. This was primarily a result of the
careful Turkish strategy. His fleets always moved slowlier than possible.
Although I tried to grow even slowlier, Turkey didn't come further. I
offered to destroy my southern fleet three times and Turkey denied. Instead
of this his third fleet was uselessly positioned in Bul. Then Turkey moved
in into BLA. The problem was: I had no intention to attack Turkey but Turkey
wanted to limit my groth without the necessary forces he needed to reach
this goal. I seldom fighted a more useless war. When I decided to attack
Turkey with full effort and my fleet reached Arm, Turkey left the game and
proxied its units to me. With two players giving themselves up (Tone and
Tony) and one who never tried to play this game (Iain), the game had lost
any strategic interest. Because of this I proposed an endgame proposal.
Let me say something about the players:
Marc: One of the two players I had regular contact with and he always had
something interesting to say. Nevertheless he had proved very soon his lack
of trustworthyness.
Max: I had very good relations with Max in the beginning, but the chaotic
situation in Scandinavia made any cooperation in the later game impossible.
Tony: We exchanged some letters, but I cannot see a real strategy in his
playing.
Tone: Tone always wrote interesting letters and had some very good ideas. I
think he was a bit too suspicious to fight the juggernaut to its end, maybe
because he really likes to stab other players, too.
Iain: He never tried to prevent his cruel fate in this game.
Mike: Mike seems to be a good tactician. If he would communicate regularly
with every player, he could reach very good results.
Again thanks to you all.Return to Top
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