taj mahal [Updated October 2003]  

 2003 WBC Report  

 2004 Status: pending 2004 GM commitment

Greg Thatcher, FL

2003 Champion

2nd: Dan Henry, IL

3rd: Tom Dunning, NY

4th: Anne Norton, NJ

5th: Doug Smith, PA

6th: Winton Lemoine, CA

Event History
2001    Tom Dunning     32
2002    Mark Guttag     46
2003    Greg Thatcher     36


Offsite links:

AREA Ratings

boardgamegeek 

 Laurels
Rank Name

From

Last
Total
 1. Tom Dunning

NY

03
42
 2. Greg Thatcher

FL

03
30
 3. Mark Guttag

VA

02
30
 4. Dan Henry

IL

03
18
 5. Nicholas Anner

NY

02
18
 6. Kevin Wojtasczyk

NY

01
18
 7. Thomas Saal

MI

02
12
 8. Marty Hoff

TX

01
12
 9. Anne Norton

NJ

03
  9
10. Charles Eastman

VA

02
  9
11. Rodney Somerstein

PA

01
  9
12. Doug Smith

PA

03
  6
13. Shawn Metcalf

MD

02
  6
14. Brian Stallings

MD

01
  6
15. Winton Lemoine

CA

03
  3
16. Joe Nemet

PA

02
  3

Past Winners

Tom Dunning - NJ
2001

Mark Guttag - VA
2002
 


shazzaam ...

Greg Thatcher is a fast learner. With a only a few Taj Mahal games under his belt he was able to fend off the 2001 TJM champion to become the reigning champion. He needed a little luck to get that far. Due to a miscommunication between myself and a first round winner I needed to find someone to fill out the second round board. Eric and Greg both readily agreed. Because they had both finished 4th in their last game it came down to a toss of (how fitting) a Euro.

Greg never looked back. He won his next three games using a combination of the elephant strategy and a palace or two in the right place. Lest you think that the Elephants are the main key to winning take heart from Joe Nemet and Susan Dyer who had only one bonus commodity tile each in their wins.

For awhile the Final became a two man race for the first half of the game. Dan Henry and Tom Dunning were tied at 16 points; Tom keeping apace using the +2 princess card as Dan was taking resource tiles. Tom was able to keep the princess card for the third through the eighth visits, but a spurt of resource tiles in the seventh and eighth visits put Dan Henry in the lead by six pts. Dan then scored a couple of points and dropped in the 11th visit to gear up for the elephant battle sure to come in the final visit. This move enabled all the players to close the gap a little. Greg had chosen his cards carefully and made his move as he won the next two of three elephant tiles. Unfortunately for Dan, Greg had more cards to win the battle for the last tile as Dan had to drop after his two card play of double elephants. Not enough to take it from Greg. The nine points Greg scored put him in the lead by four. (43-39)

Anne Norton got a late start in the game as she only had 11 pts by the ninth visit. But an elaborate palace connection came to fruition as she scored 19 points in the last two visits to tie Tom for third. It came down to a tie breaker of cards in the last scoring round which gave Tom third place having four cards to Anne's three.

There were some grumblings from players who wanted five-player games. These games are a little tougher for the newbie. My obvious preference was for the four-player version. We were down in attendance from 46 to 36, so if you did not play because of that please let me know about it. You can reach me at the address below.

Thanks to all the players that did participate in the tourney, I had a blast running it.

 GM      Brian Stallings  [1st Year]  NA
    bstal39@netzero.net   (NA)

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