February 21, 2008 Session Report

Unfortunately and perhaps not unexpectedly, there was big dropoff from last week's record attendance as we were down to a more "normal" core group of seven, including Neil, Nick, Clayton, Ben, Sarah, Gabe and myself.

We started off with one of my favorite games, McGartlin Stock Car Racing, and Nick was all set up for the win when he lacked a pass card for a crucial yellow flag crash just five laps from the end. Nick dropped to the rear and finished there. Neil inherited the lead and eventually won the race, with Ben in second and Gabe third. This game will be part of a special event, TrashFest, at Maryland Games Days during the first weekend in May -- everyone who reads this should note the Early Bird Pre-Registration (with a special discount in addition to a discount for GCOM Supporting Members) is coming up soon (March 8). For details see:

http://gamedays.gamesclubofmd.org

After the McGartlin race we broke into two groups: Clayton, Ben and I played Coloretto which was won by Ben with Clayton not too far back with me in last, much farther back. Nick, Sarah, Gabe and Neil played a couple of rounds of Tumblin Dice, both of which were won by Sarah. Then Ben joined the dice group while Neil joined Clayton and me for more Coloretto action. I have Nick down for ending Sarah's streak at the dice game, and Neil and Clayton finished 1-2 putting me in last (again) in Coloretto; although I had a much higher score than the first game, so did everyone else.

The seven of us re-organized once again, and Ben, Nick, Neil and I became Indian tea collectors in Darjeeling. We decided not to play to a full game but declared the winner after someone hit 70 points. That someone turned out to be Ben, who won with 69 (suffering a -1 penalty for an unfinished half-crate). I was second with 67, ahead of Nick (59) and Neil (57). Interesting game with alot of leapfrogging over each other -- no telling what would have happened had we played to 100.

The other group of Gabe, Sarah and Clayton played Hey That's My Fish and TransAmerica (both won by Gabe) and then started the Artifacts variant of Chrononauts that was not completed. (Heard from the next table over that there may have been some rules controversies in this one.)

Final game of the evening was a five-player Fairy Tale; final scores were Gabe 49 Ben 44 Nick and John 37 Sarah 36 but hey, I had five mischievous fairies at the end.

Hope to see more of you next week, including some of the folks who were here last week that I didn't have the chance to welcome to the club.