August 23, 2007 Session Report

Another strong week attendance-wise as we had 11 gamers in attendance, including two first time visitors to the club: Kathy (Rodney's mom) who was visiting from Arkansas and Kathryn, a friend of Val's who was visiting from North Carolina. Gabe, Sarah, Doug, Eric, Clayton, Paul S, Rodney, Val and myself made up the rest of the group as a total of 10 games were played, three at once for a good part of the evening.

Gabe, Paul, Clayton and I played the recent Queen/Rio Grande release, Thebes, which turned out to be a nice win for Paul (aided by 15 pts from speaking tours) with 51 pts to 43 for Clayton; I came in third with 41, followed by Gabe with 35. After several initial turns to collect cards (extra shovels, learning, etc.) we all "got our hands dirty" with some excavating, some of which was more successful than others. Clayton dominated the Greek excavations, and interestingly, he and Paul (the two new players to the game) finished one-two -- setting up a trend that lasted throughout the evening's games.

Rodney (one of those new to the game) won a game of Skip-Bo, playing with Doug, Kathy and Sarah. Eric and Val tied for first in a really close game of Guillotine, 26 each for Eric and Val and 24 for Kathryn. Kathryn then won two games in a row (Mamma Mia with eight completed orders and Loco) playing with the same group of players. There was also a four-handed game of TransAmerica contested by Doug, Kathy, Rodney and Sarah -- sorry, don't have the results for this one.

After this, we went for larger groups and played an eight-player game of Incan Gold (formerly known as Diamant). Clayton seemed to be one of the first to return to the tents, sometimes with alot of treasure, while Rodney seemed to be the one pushing his luck. The winner, however, turned out to be Rodney's mom, Kathy, with a score of 21. Clayton at 17 was second, followed by a large group at 16 (Doug, Paul, Rodney and myself), Sarah at 14, and Gabe bringing up the rear with 11.

The final two games of the evening were Saboteur and Category 5, again with 8 players in each game. All three rounds of Saboteur saw the dwarves outsmart the Saboteurs, and Doug and Sarah tied with 8 gold. Other scores were: Eric 5, Gabe and Kathryn 4, Paul and myself at 3 followed by Val with 2. Category 5 also lasted three hands, and Val hit the incredibly high score of 100 but, unfortunately, low score wins in this one and Doug edged out Gabe by 3 points after Paul held a slender lead going into the final hand.

A reminder: We have just one more week with the summer closing time of 9 PM, then after Labor Day the sessions will revert to the normal hours of 6 - 10 PM.