April 10, 2008 Session Report

We had a total of six for tonight's session: Paul, Nick, Clayton, Doug, Ben and myself. We wound up playing only four games, as one game that was new to most ran a bit long (sorry about that).

First up was Olympia 2000, which was a five-player as Clayton had not yet arrived. Ben and Nick were new to the game. Nick's athletes prevailed by a narrow count of 10 to 8 for Doug and 7 for Paul as Ben and I brought up the rear.

Second game was Cloud 9, and this time we had a full complement of six amateur balloon flyers. Paul emerged the winner when he accompanied Clayton on a 25-point journey to the top of Cloud 9, after Ben and Paul had succeeded in an earlier effort after Nick bailed out at the 20-point level. Final scores were Paul 50+ to win, Nick 43, Clayton 42, Doug 32, John 30, Ben 28. Kept stats on the crashes, too -- Nick failed three times and I didn't have the rest of us crashing more than once.

Next we tried a longer game mainly because it played with all six and we weren't prepared to break into two groups. I brought Falsche Fuffziger, an older Friedemann Friese design that is now pretty much out of print (got it second-hand through a private sale on BGG last year). The theme of the game is about counterfeiting, and the game has some interesting but possibly flawed mechanics regarding who goes first. I started out well with the coin auctions but warned everyone that -- while I was in good shape for the short-term, long-term things may not work it. This proved prophetic as I (along with a couple of others) didn't anticipate the 100 presses going away so quickly after the 50 presses in what proved to be the penultimate turn. The six bonus coins for most "real" money put Nick over the top for the win, with 20 to 17 for yours truly, followed by Doug at 14, Clayton 12 while Ben (8) and Paul (5) tried some things that didn't seem to work out.

Finally, for the second week in a row, we tried Ben's invention, a fishing game with the working title of "Open Water." We managed to get in a few turns to get the mechanics down when all of a sudden it was closing time. Next time, hopefully we can start it a bit sooner (apologize for the length of the prior game) so we can finish a complete game.

A couple of announcements: 1. Nick Schroedl has agreed to serve as Co-Host for the Club.
2. In cooperation with Games Club of Maryland, we will once again be operating a booth at the Laurel Main Street Festival on Saturday May 10th. The plan is to have TWICE the space we had last year, more room for folks to stop by and learn games. It will be a great opportunity to try to attract new folks to the hobby, so I am hoping for good weather. More details once the event draws closer (and we have specific booth assignments) ...