November 15, 2007 Session Report

For the second week in a row, we hit double-figures in attendance even with a few regular attendees missing this week. (Imagine what heights we might reach if everyone showed up at the same time!) Roll call for this week's session included Paul, Doug, Clayton, Gabe, Helen and myself, plus Neil (who we hadn't seen for a good while) along with Joan, Matthew and daughter Olivia who were back for their second session. Woo hoo!

A total of six games got played, two of which (brought by me) were making their debuts at the club. First up was a quick game of Parlay, played by Clayton, Doug, Paul and myself, while we were waiting for others to arrive. The game broke up right after Doug scored some big points for his second 7-letter word in a row. (I think I have only come up with one seven-letter word ever since I started playing Parlay about six months ago!)

The main game of the evening was Kingsburg, which was a handmade prototype of an Essen release based on the English rules -- the game is not yet available in the States. I taught the game to Clayton, Gabe, Paul and Doug. It's a 5-turn game with four parts ("seasons") where you roll dice three times per turn to influence advisors to this mythical king, build buildings and then prepare to wage battle with the king's enemies in the fourth season. Gabe and Paul expressed concern about the luck of the die rolls early in the game, and Clayton (who had some really good rolls in the first turn or so) raced out to an early lead. The game tightened up in the middle, but Gabe got the Cathedral built and managed to finish first, with a few cubes left over to convert into more VPs. Even Doug, who finished last, seemed to like the game. Final scores were Gabe 45 John 39 Paul 37 Clayton 34 Doug 30. Looking forward to trying this one out with the real deck of Enemies cards, as I just had to guess at most of them to come up with a playable hand-made prototype.

By then, Neil, Matthew, Jane and Olivia had arrived, and they played a couple of games of Blokus, which Jane and Olivia had learned from Doug and Eric the prior week. Olivia seemed to have picked up the game fairly well, and she won both games! By this time Helen arrived, and the Kingsburg game still had a turn or so left. Helen decided to teach Puerto Rico to the newcomers, a daunting challenge as it is a bit on the high end of the complexity. Well, as it turns out, the game didn't get finished, but Jane (who said she hadn't a clue) wound up with the most points. While Jane and Matthew were scratching their heads a bit after being exposed to one of the more advanced games, Olivia said she began to "get it" towards the end of the session.

Finally, the other game new to the club and just about all of us (except perhaps Doug, who recalled playing this one a couple of years back, was Leapfrog. It's a series of three frog races where each player controls his/her frog by playing a disck numbered 1-6. Scoring is based on finish position with an added incentive to collect tadpoles based on finishing position. At the end, Paul and I tied for first on points, but Paul won the tiebreaker, two tadpoles to won. Helen, Doug, and Clayton were the other players, but Clayton's frog "croaked" at the end.

Everyone should know the Community Center is closed for Turkey Day next week, so our next session will be in two weeks, which is Thursday, November 29, 2007.

Finally, the Games Club of Maryland is sponsoring a new event, a gaming retreat which will be a one-day FREE event coming in January. There are two requirements: Attendees must be GCOM supporting members and attendees must pre-register for the event in advance. For details, just ask me at the next club session (I have some copies of the pre-reg form) or check out the GCOM webpage for this event:

http://www.gamesclubofmd.org/gamingretreat.asp