February 19, 2009 Session Report

Attendance of eight for this week's session: Doug, Paul, Mike, Jonathan, Don, Clayton, Gabe and myself. Games played: R-Eco, Through the Ages, One More Barrel, Agricola, Roll through the Ages.

Doug, Paul, Mike and Jonathan were setting up R-Eco when I arrived, so we played a five-player game of this quick filler. I managed to win with 11 points, Paul was next with 8, Doug and Jonathan had 6, Mike brought up the rear with 3. Doug, Mike and I were the three dumpers, while Paul and Jonathan were the two ecologists.

Don, Clayton and Gabe had arrived and so we split into two groups. At one table, Gabe, Don, Mike and Jonathan tackled a four-player game of Through the Ages, an ambitious project given our time constraints. As it turned out, the game was abandoned part way through, as everyone conceded to Gabe who was running away with it. Then Jonathan and Mike departed early, leaving Don and Gabe to play a two-player Agricola, which was won by Gabe, 48-22.

The other group of Doug, Paul, Clayton and myself played another new game that I had brought called One More Barrel that simulates the invasion of an oil-producing country in the Middle East by military superpowers. (Sound familiar?) Anyway, with rules explanation and all, the game dragged on for about three hours, and Doug discovered the winning formula, just control a region and move on the contracts chart even if you have no troops or oil, and he prevailed with a winning score of 95 to 56 for Paul, 12 for John and -35 for Clayton who had trouble managing his Pacifism level. Makes me wonder if I missed something in the rules translation, as the game turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

There was still about a half hour left, so we tried to finish a four-player Through the Ages, had to cut it short, so we ended the game after everyone had an equal number of turns. Final scores were reported as Doug 12, Clayton and Paul 11, yours truly last with 7, as the low scores reflect the fact that we were unable to complete a full game.