January 8, 2009 Session Report

First session of the New Year -- we had a total of eight in attendance. Clayton, Doug, Paul, Mike, Ben, Jonathan, Don and I played a total of four different games with two tables going at just about all times.

Games played: Ra, Lost Cities, Cosmic Encounter, Wealth of Nations.

First hour saw the early arrivers (Clayton, Doug, Paul, Mike and myself) start off with a five-player Ra, which saw Mike come from behind in the third Epoch after Doug and Clayton had each threatened to win the game, while Paul and I trailed badly. Final scores: Mike 53, Doug 46, Clayton 44 then a big gap, Paul with 30 John last with 28. Ben and Jonathan had arrived a completed a two-player Lost Cities game, not keeping track of the scores.

Don had arrived and wanted to play Wealth of Nations, while Mike and Jonathan were pushing Cosmic Encounter -- each of these longer games took up the rest of the session time. Ben and Paul joined Mike and Jonathan in the Cosmic Encounter game, no report on the game except Jonathan was the winner. The Wealth of Nations game pushed right up against the time limit. To make a long story short, Don crushed us -- when we hastily tallied up the points, he had more than twice the VPs of anyone else (124). Clayton with 60 was a distant second, closely followed by John (59) and Doug (55). Since it was Doug's first play, he kind of had a good excuse for losing, but Clayton and I had both played before and we still got creamed.