November 29. 2007 Session Report

Tonight, we had eight gamers present and played a total of 13 games, counting two games that were played twice. Present and accounted for were Paul, Eric, Clayton, Jane, Olivia, Matthew, and myself plus one first-time attendee -- Ben Stephenson, who had been to some other locations and was joining our group for the first time (we hope he comes back!). Games played included two games that were new to the club (Uptown and Chateau Rocquefort) in addition to favorites such as Quiddler, Wits and Wagers (played twice), Ingenious, Blokus, Cartagena, Can't Stop, Carcassone, Guillotine (played twice) and Lost Cities. As usual, some details follow.

Quiddler was the first game up, and Eric, Paul and I got in around 4-5 hands before other people started showing up. Paul had a bad first round, getting hit with a -19 but rallied to put himself in contention in the final hand. Eric won the game, 95 to 92 for Paul and 80 for yours truly -- Eric was a bit more consistent and only had one hand when he didn't score alot of points. The three of us were joined by Ben and Clayton for a game of Uptown, which I taught after all of one play under my belt (everyone else was new). Ben won his first game at the club as he had all his tiles connected, despite taking a whole bunch of capture tiles (which would have hurt him had it gone to a tiebreaker -- but no one else had fewer than two so Ben won.)

We started up a game of Wits and Wagers just as Matthew, Jane and Olivia arrived. We split up into two groups as Olivia and Jane wanted to perfect their skills in some of the games they had learned in prior weeks. So, they played a three-player Ingenious (Paul being the third player) which Olivia won. Then the same group tried Cartagena and Jane was the winner. Meanwhile, a couple of five-player Wits and Wagers games were completed at the other table, with John coming on top in one and Matthew doing well to win the second, which we played with the new edition rules where you are guaranteed two "free" 5-chip bets per round.

Eric had brought the other new game, Chateau Roquefort, which he proceeded to start explaining -- it had some cute mice going after four different kinds of cheese, and Paul, Ben and Matthew joined him for the first play -- the score record shows another win for Ben. Meanwhile, Jane, Olivia and I tackled Blokus -- a game Olivia seems to have figured out as she stomped us, getting all her pieces down, Jane edging me for second.

Next round of games had four of us (Jane, Olivia, Clayton and myself) playing Can't Stop while the other table played one of the fastest Carcassone games ever. Can't Stop turned out to be a win for Clayton, who bombed out the first three rounds but then starting hitting his numbers while the rest of us played a bit too cautiously, as it turned out. Eric took the quick-playing Carcassone game by a fairly comfortable margin. Eric, Ben and Paul kept going with two games of Guillotine -- one of which was really close, 20-18-18, Eric squeaking by -- but Ben took the second game for his third win of the evening.

One final game was Lost Cities -- Clayton vs John -- and it was a little revenge for that Can't Stop debacle; after a full three hands, it was John 161 Clayto 34.

Hope to see everyone back next week.