March 27, 2008 Session Report

We had a total of eight gamers in attendance tonight: Clayton, Ben, Paul, Nick, Sarah and myself were joined by Joan (Sarah's mom) and Abe, both of whom we had not seen in awhile. A total of eight different games were played, some more than once: R-Eco, Ingenious, San Juan, Ticket to Ride, Kingsburg, Gin, Can't Stop and Cloud 9.

Started off with a five-player game of R-Eco, which wound up being quite messy as all of us wounding up opening illegal trash dumps and, in the end, only Nick and I avoided negative scores. Final results were John 11, Nick 6, Clayton and Paul both at -1 with Ben bringing up the rear with a -3.

Sarah arrived and we split up into two groups. I played Ingenious with Sarah and Clayton, and Clayton wound up the winner when he successfully blocked any opportunity for expansion in orange, which happened to be the weakest color of both Sarah and myself. Final results: Clayton 9, Sarah 8, and I was last with 6. The other group, consisting of Ben, Nick and Paul, played San Juan, and Nick wound up winning with two "6" bonus buildings and a purple building strategy that netted him 41 points to 32 for Paul and 27 for Ben.

We split into two groups for the next series of games which lasted for the bulk of the evening. Ben, Nick and I were joined by Abe for a four-player Kingsburg, which we played with a variant that rendered "aid from the King" on a 1-3 range instead of the 1-6 in the rules as written. As a result, the winter battles with the enemies became much more vicious (and each year we seemed to be facing the more destructive and vicious enemies), and Abe lost three times and I lost twice, including a four-point building. As a result, the game evolved into a contest between Nick and Ben, with Nick coming out on top with 41 points (amazing -- the same winning score he had in San Juan) while Ben was second with 37.

The other group of Clayton, Paul and Sarah completed two games of Ticket to Ride in less time that it took the rest of us to finish Kingsburg. Sarah won the first game with a score of 104 with Clayton (92) not that far behind. Paul bounced back strongly in the second game, managing to get all his 45 trains on the map as part of the longest route, covering a loop throughout the US map. He also completed all of his tickets for a total of 121, with Sarah second with 99.

By this time Joan had arrived (ostensibly to deliver a set of car keys to Sarah) but of course we persuaded her to join us for a couple of games. She and Sarah played some two-handed gin while the Kingsburg game was wrapping up -- no report on who won. Then Sarah and Joan joined Abe and Clayton in a Can't Stop game which apparently ended with no victor although it observers suggested Clayton might have been in position to win had he stopped after getting one number to the top. In between games, Clayton also demonstrated his skill at card tricks which, as usual, had all observers left shaking their collective heads in amazement.

Nick, Paul and I introduced Ben to Cloud 9 at the other table. After multiple crashes and much "trash talk" about who was the best balloon pilot, Paul won the first game with 51 while Nick came back to win the second game with a score of 57.

I regret I will miss next week's session due to a long awaited vacation but I trust Mr. Nick Schroedl will serve as acting host in my stead, and I look forward to reading his report on ... could it be another record-breaking session?

See y'all in two weeks time.