January 15, 2009 Session Report

Attendance was 9 this week: Gabe and Greg were back after a bit of a hiatus, along with Jonathan, Mike, Doug, Paul, Clayton, Don and myself. We played a total of seven different games: Hoity Toity, TransAmerica, Age of Steam, Tribune, Puerto Rico, Powerboats and Turn the Tide.

Hoity Toity was a five-player, won by John over Gabe on the longest set tiebreaker, Doug, Paul and Jonathan also played. The other table started up with TransAmerica, three players (Mike, Don, Greg) and no report on who won. Then Clayton arrived and joined Mike, Don, Greg and very long, intense Age of Steam game. Clayton was apparently close to bankruptcy in this unforgiving game, but managed to survive to the end. It was a real close finish among the other three, final scores were reported as Mike 90, Greg 85, Don 81, Clayton far back at 29.

The five of us at the other table elected for Tribune, which lasted longer than usual, with four of the five reaching the four of six victory conditions. It came down to the tiebreaker, with Doug getting the two-point bonus for triggering the end, and the game was still a tie (no further tiebreakers in the rules) with Doug and Jonathan at 29, John at 24, Paul at 23, and Gabe was not far back, with three of the four winning conditions.

The five of us then played an old favorite, Puerto Rico, which wound up in a win for Gabe (56) ahead of Doug (51), Jonathan (45), John and Paul (44). The other table played Powerboats, which saw Mike narrowly edge Clayton for the win. Greg crashed near the end, and Doug abandoned the race to get home a bit earlier. Finally, there were a couple of four-handed rounds of Turn the Tide (Doug, Gabe, Paul and myself), didn't keep track of the scores.