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I hope you enjoyed reading "The Costly Case of the Last Man Standing". As extraordinary as the Baron's feat may appear, reducing the whole board to a single unit in a mere four years from that ever so familiar, but oh so unpromising starting position, it's by no means a unique accomplishment. In fact there are so many variations that I have decided to dedicate a column to it in your favorite Diplomacy magazine, the Pouch's own Zine. Each issue I will challenge you to two compelling puzzles, mostly in the form of the map near its game end, where your task is to find a path that may lead to this particular solution. Kind of a checkmate problem with the initial and final position given. The studious reader may already be acquainted with the fact that Sherlock Holmes has repeated the Baron's first feat (the no neutrals case) many times over by guiding the same Army Liverpool to every single Great Power capital on the continent. Those who failed to find a copy of the Diplomacy in Kent (aka the DK), a notably obscure magazine no longer published today, will be relieved to hear that there's a modern rendition in this year's Summer and Fall edition of Diplomacy World (aka DW). Definitely worth a read, as it presents a nice overview of many of the terms particular to this kind of puzzle. There's no need to dwell endlessly over the solutions themselves, as they will be reprised in this column in far greater detail. For this inauguration however, we'll take a look at another deduction that Sherlock had casually posited. The fact that any power can have its own unit become The Last Man Standing in Berlin. No neutrals taken and with all powers still represented in 1902. These will be the standard conditions in many of the puzzles in this column, unless otherwise stated. Taking the Liverpool to Berlin solution as our guidance, a few simple substitutions allow to exchange the English army with any of the other four raiders remaining after 1902. I'll demonstrate this in detail below, but first I will present to you your first two puzzles. Namely how to make a German or a Russian unit, the two sniper countries, the Last Man Standing. Mission: The Berlin WallLet's start with the at face value most daunting task, the German to triumph in his own capital. And not any German unit, it's the army starting there, army Berlin, that's going to be our champion. But is it so daunting? In fact, the biggest obstacle has already been cleared, that of temporary losing Berlin to another power. For if Germany had owned Berlin until the end, there's no way to reduce the number of units from two to one. Luckily, with the temporary occupation by Russia we know how to get around that obstacle.
Austria (0/5) Bud Mos Tri Vie War England (0/5) Bre Edi Lon Lvp Mun France (0/2) Mar Ven Germany (1/2) A Ber / Ber Par Italy (0/2) Nap Rom Turkey (0/6) Ank Con Kie Sev Smy Stp Consider the map above, showing the final position. Compared to the Baron's map there are only two differences: The black army in Berlin (obviously) and, most vitally, the black dot in Paris where both used to be blue. We know that Germany captured Paris with its Munich army in 1901. It should not be lost to England in 1902. If you can do that and somehow keep the Berlin army in play, the solution will come within your grasp. Mission: CracklandFor the Russian puzzle, I'd like to show you a completely different final map, courtesy of Graeme Ackland. As the avid SHCD puzzler will know, Graeme is responsible for some of the best Diplomacy puzzles out there, and in fact the current record holder in the number published in this Zine. Army Warsaw goes on a raid through four countries before triumphing in Berlin. And he's not the only raider around. No less than three powers get eliminated, with Turkey barely hanging on. How is it done?
England (0/6) Bre Edi Lon Lvp Mun Par Italy (0/7) Kie Mar Nap Rom Smy Tri Vie Russia (1/8) A Ber / Ank Ber Bud Mos Sev Stp Ven War Turkey (0/1) Con Back to the raiders. To shorten the prose and give each unit a proper identity, I will consequentially denote a unit with its unit type and starting city in abbreviated form. Army Liverpool therefore becomes A Lvp throughout the narrative, Fleet St. Petersburg (south coast) becomes F Stp, and so on. We'll start in the West. To substitute the English army (A Lvp) in Paris with the French army (A Par) in Burgundy, let the latter support the German army (A Mun) in Picardy to Paris in Spring 1903. A Par is then ready to move to Munich in Fall, while A Mun leaves Paris to prevent Germany from retaking the center.
A similar move is possible for Italy. In Fall 1903 let A Rom in Munich support A Mun, whether in Picardy or Paris, to Burgundy to secure its own survival.
We continue our tour with the Turkish army (A Con), waiting in Kiel at the start of 1904. It simply needs to have the courtesy of letting the army in Munich (which became A Rom by now) enter Berlin first before it strikes with support from the Russian fleet (F Stp/sc), which must first move to the Baltic Sea or Prussia.
For the final champion, the Austrian army (A Bud), let's rollback to the Spring of 1903. At this point A Bud can move from Moscow to St. Petersburg, dislodging A Con with support from F Stp/sc in the Gulf of Bothnia, before being convoyed to Kiel in Fall.
Comparing the Fall 1903 map to the one in the original solution, note that the convoy in Fall only became possible because there's no longer a need for the army in Kiel to support Burgundy to Munich. Instead the Italian army in Munich, by supporting the German sniper to Burgundy, ensures that we obtain the proper arrangement for the Spring of 1904.
It's up to you now, dear reader, to discover the solutions for the two sniper countries. To aid in this task I have adapted UKDP (with USDP soon to follow suit) to accept single player games (called Solitaire) that can be won when only one unit remains on the board. All you need to do is to join the DPPD (if you haven't already done so, since it's completely free and shared between all DPjudges), create a game on UKDP and add the LAST_MAN_STANDING rule before allowing the game to form. All orders can be entered from the Master page, which has been significantly cleaned up. The previous rule clutter was moved off to its own page, accessible by pressing "Edit Settings".
Does it work? You bet it does. All images provided here have been generated from the LAST_MAN_STANDING game shcd_last-man-standing_p1. Give it a spin.
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