monty's gamble: market garden [Updated October 2005]  

2005 WBC Report   

 2006 Status: pending 2006 GM commitment

Jim Eliason, IA

2005 Champion


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Event History
2003    Walter Garman     11
2004    Mike Rinella     20
2005    Jim Eliason     22

 Laurels

Rank  Name              From  Last  Total
  1.  David Long         NC    05     36
  2.  Jim Eliason        IA    05     30
  3.  Mike Rinella       NY    04     30
  4.  Walter Garman      MD    04     16
  5.  John Haas          DE    05     12
  6.  Jim Eliason        IA    04     12
  7.  Scott Moll         VA    05      9
  8.  Bob Jamelli        PA    04      9
  9.  Paul Nied          KS    05      6
 10.  Andrew Cummins     UK    03      6
 11.  Ken Dunn           MD    04      5
 12.  Chris Roginsky     PA    03      4
 13.  Todd Bogan         VA    05      3
 14.  Joel Tamburo       IL    03      3
          

2005 Laurelists

David Long, NC
2nd

John Haas, DE
3rd

Scott Moll, VA
4th

Paul Nied, KS
5th

Todd Bogan, MD
6th


Past Winners

Walter Garman, MD
2003

Michael Rinella, NY
2004


Impulse movement in the low countries ...

The Arnhem campaign opened enthusiastically in Lampeter Hall with numbers slightly but encouragingly up on last year's contest.

Monty's Gamble depicts in a quick playing area form, an operational treatment of the campaign to bring an early end to the struggle against Germany with a crossing of the Rhine before the 1944 winter. The basic game readily playing out in three hours makes it a natural choice for the tournament format.

Play for both sides has tightened up over the three years since the game was released but there isn't any sign so far of a game-breaking strategy favoring either side. The players opted in equal numbers on the initial round to play the German or Allied sides and there was little bidding for sides in the later rounds. The balance of the results from twenty games confirmed this with eleven German to nine Allied wins.

The first round brought some early upsets to the form book with the game's designer and defending champion, Mike Rinella, falling to the stubborn resistance of John Haas' Germans, while your author and GM fell to the sledgehammer blows of Paul Nied's Allies.

The game has attracted some players across from the world of Breakout Normandy but these players with their longer experience of the area system by no means dominate the scene. Monty's Gamble is generating it's own experts. Of the four semi-finalists only one, Jim Eliason, is a regular BKN competitor.

As has become the tradition, the designer (many thanks) awarded two additional prizes to the competition for the earliest German reconquest of Arnhem and the earliest Allied seizure of Nijmegen. These went respectively to Scott Moll clearing the Red Devil's on a remarkable turn 18, impulse B and to David Long receiving a consolation prize for his turn 19, impulse 1 routing of the German defenses.

The Final saw David Long's Allies facing Jim Eliason's Germans. The game had an inauspicious beginning for the 1st Airborne with the key Driel bridge being blown and a couple of units spent by flak. XXX Corps made a poor start also but recovered to clear the road halfway to Arnhem on the first day. However Arnhem was weakly held and German assaults destroyed the defenders shortly after dawn on the second day. David's attempts to create a counter-play withered in the face of cold dice. With German reinforcements flooding across the Rhine to make Nijmegen impregnable, the allies gave up the unequal fight and Jim Eliason had the tournament victory.

 GM      Andrew Cummins  [2nd Year]   NA
   qp05@dial.pipex.com   NA

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