Season 11 continues to heat up. January was our busiest months of the year with four games. February could be even busier. We started the month off with a short-notice, weeknight event at Peter Lokken’s home in Logan Square. We posted the game last Saturday, and it filled in six hours. Encouraged by that response, Peter decided to shoot for two. And we got six more players.
David Spanos pulled double duty. That’s never an easy feat, but it was even more challenging on Wednesday night, with one board in Peter’s condo and the other in the vacant garden apartment that Peter recently remodeled. The setup required David to brave the cold each time he switched boards.
Both games made it through 1906. The final center counts were:
England (Zach Eddy): 8; 23.022 points.
France (Bryan Pravel): 0; 0.000 points.
Germany (Ali Adib): 6; 12.950 points.
Italy (Carlos Trevino: 5; 8.993 points.
Russia (Mike Morrison): 3; 3.237 points.
Turkey (Tom Sugameli): 12; 51.799 points.
England (Peter Lokken): 2; 1.681 points.
France (Jake Trotta): 6; 15.126 points.
Germany (Brandon Fogel): 9; 34.034 points.
Italy (Chris Kelly): 7; 20.588 points.
Russia (David Spanos): 2; 1.681 points.
Turkey (Brian Shelden): 8; 26.891 points.
Game No. 292 was just the second ever for Eddy, whom we don’t believe is related to hobby greybeard Buz. In his first game, No. 289 last month, he topped as Turkey…which is exactly what Sugameli pulled off here. Their two board-tops are a testament to our novice rules.
Meanwhile in Game No. 293, Fogel recorded a more modest board-top, but it was enough to vault him into first in season the standings and also to the top of the topping list for the season at 1.5.
Here are the center charts. Perhaps the players will tell us what really happened.
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At Red Wednesday this week, Jake and Bryan both referred to some hedgehog or other that I’ve never heard of. I hope they’ll elaborate here…
Unfortunately I don’t recall the exact specifics, maybe Jake can clarify?
The short version is that we both took the very rare gambit of delaying the Iberian builds on two separate boards, both mucked it up, and both ended up with very poor results. You normally have to try really hard to get results that bad as France so it was quite funny to see it happen on two separate boards when we hadn’t discussed it at all. Jake gave it a clever name that I can’t recall but the reference at last weekend’s game wasn’t so much a comment about something successful as a laugh at how bad the concept worked for us.
I think Jake called it something like the Manche Hedgehog because you make a play for ENG, BUR, and PIE (or in my case I mistakenly did ENG, BUR, PIC). It reminds me a bit of a French version of the Austrian hedgehog.
Bryan and I had slightly different openings.
My Spring 01 orders were Picardy, Channel, and Piedmont.
After orders were read, England (Peter) said to me “there is no French hedgehog!”
I countered, in the spirit of the season, that a hedgehog would also go to Burgundy. So it must be the french groundhog. At the end of the fall, the groundhog name stuck because I had 0 builds.
The logic behind that opening was Austria said he would take Trieste in 01, while Russia and Germany had committed to a Sea Lion against the British.
Unfortunately, Austria misordered his move into Trieste while Russia did not bounce England out of Norway. England built a fleet in London while Italy built an army. This created an early RT and allowed England to get an upper hand on France.
In 02 and 03, EF was locked in a stalemate, with France picking up Iberia, while Italy grew to 6 centers.The early game focused around Germany playing both sides of the EF conflict while also taking Scandanavia. Meanwhile, IT worked together to take down Austria.
When Russia recognized Germany was going to take Scandinavia, he moved to the NWG convoyed his Swedish unit to Edi, essentially trading places with the English player. This wayward British army made it all the way to Moscow, with the German following behind and taking control of STP and NWY.
The Turk stabbed Russia in 03, swiping Sev. Rum was next, then Bud and Serb before a stagnant final year.
Overall, the game was a bit of a disaster. The most effective alliance was a midgame IT (!), England ended the game with just Moscow and London, and Germany topped the board with Scandanavia, STP and home.
Jim, I know Brandon and I both usually take photos after each season. Should I email them to you and you can attach them to the game report? Is that something people would be interested in?