August 16, 2007 Session Report

Ten attended last night's session: Gabe, Paul S., Rodney, Clayton, Doug H, Eric H, Sarah, Nicole, Beth and myself wound up playing a total of nine games during the course of the evening. We had three games going at once for the part of the time.

Gabe, Paul and I got there a few minutes early and we played a card game called Treasures and Traps which Gabe had brought. We decided to abandon the game when others began arriving, as it wasn't clear how long it would take before the game would finish. By then we had seven players and split into two groups, one for a four-player Vegas Showdown which began as a close battle between Clayton and myself, but I managed to score some points for diamonds near the end to pull away while the one new player to the game (Sarah) came home second. Final scores were John 62, Sarah 49, Clayton 41 and Paul 40. Clayton had five (!) lounges in the game but, unfortunately for him, the Lounge Lizard card did not come out to give him a big points bonus. The other game, a three-player game of Thebes (the recent remake of Jenseits von Theben), was claimed by Eric, 80 to 65 for Gabe and 59 for Doug, the only new player at the game.

By then Nicole, Beth and Rodney had arrived, and they set up a third table to play Alchemist. Rodney and Beth, who had both played the game before, finished 1-2 with 85 and 81 points, respectively, ahead of Nicole, the one new player, with 61. That same group played For Sale, and this time the winner was Beth with 82, followed by Nicole at 71 then Rodney at 64.

For the next round of games, we split into two groups of five. One group played Cash n' Guns, which was won by Eric (now 2 for 2 for the evening) ahead of Beth, Nicole, Gabe and Rodney; final scores were reported as 110-85-80-75-55. The other game was an old club favorite, Hoity Toity, and Paul managed to snag the win by taking best collection on the "oldest" work tiebreaker just ahead of Sarah and Clayton, all of whom made it to the finishing spaces; Doug and I also played in the game but we didn't come close to winning, having both our thieves in jail for a good part of the game.

The final two games of the evening took us right up to closing time. There was a four-player Category 5 which was won by Sarah based on consistency -- defined as never taking more than 25 pts on any one hand. I had the early lead but could not hold it, while Doug recovered after a 38 pt first hand to wind up challenging Sarah for the win. I think we played around 6-7 hands and the final scores were Sarah 74, Doug 84, Paul 92, John 112 (lower scores are better in this game). The other game was Beowulf, and this time the winner was Gabe (34) followed by Rodney (29), Beth (23), Nicole (20) and Eric (16) who finally had his winning streak for the evening snapped.

Hope everyone had a good time, looking forward to seeing you all again next week.