May 16, 2009 Special Saturday Session Report

This is a session report for the special Saturday session that was jointly hosted by our club, along with the Columbia GCOM club (hosted by Norman and Amy Rule). As announced previously, the session took place at the Canterbury Riding Clubhouse in West Laurel, from 5 PM until 1 AM. Big thanks to Lee Mewshaw who did most of the work in securing the facility for this session.

Total attendance: 13 (This includes Laurel club regulars Ron, Greg, Eric S, Rodney and myself; Helen, who has been to the Laurel club in the past; Norman, Amy, Marcy, Lee, John M. (Lee's husband) and Nessa who are Columbia club regulars, and Michele T., who I met for the first time whom the Columbia group is claiming so they outnumbered the Laurel group 7-6 assuming we count Helen. Now, rumor has it their group could have done even better were it not for some "Wine in the Woods" event going on in Columbia at the same time, but there's no way of verifying the accuracy of those statements. Also, I was a bit disappointed not to see a bigger turnout from more of our Laurel club regulars, as everyone there had a great time, ordering Chinese and pizza from across the street, making liberal use of the refrigerator for sodas and snacks.

Now, on the most important part of the report: the games played list and summary. With as many as four different games going on at once, it was a real challenge to keep track of everything. After conferring with Norman, Amy, and others, I came up with the following list of 18 different games played, a couple of which had multiple plays: Dominion (x3), Ricochet Robot, Qwirkle Cubes, TransAmerica, Too Many Cooks, Roll Through the Ages, Skip-Bo, Big City, Power Grid (Korea map), Ticket to Ride (standard US map), Railroad Tycoon (also with the standard US map), Uno, Container, Carcassone-The Tower, Monty Python Fluxx, Powerboats (x2), Snow Tails, and (last but not least) the Vallco Championship Drag Racing game.

Now, at the start of the session, I put one sheet for tracking results of games played but unfortunately not everyone wrote down the games, who played what, final scores, so this session report will be a bit incomplete and probably more focused on the games I was playing, but here goes.

First up for me was Qwirkle Cubes, a three-player with Greg and Amy. I believe Amy got out to an early lead, then it went back and forth for awhile, before Greg pulled ahead about midway through and went on to a decisive win. Final scores were Greg 130, John W. 98 Amy 88. The other initial games were Ricochet Robot (which included Norman and Marcy, no report on who won) and Dominion, for which I have scores of 37 for Lee, 35 for Nessa, 26 for John M. and 13 for Michelle.

Eric and Rodney had joined the group, and next game up was Too Many Cooks, which I believe was one of the games Greg had brought. It was a fairly interesting quick-playing card game, and Eric edged out Greg for the win (19 to 18). Rodney, Amy and I were the other players in this one.

I have John M., Michelle and Lee playing SkipBo, which was won by John. Then there was a four-player Ticket to Ride, another close game, Michelle came in first, 138 to 136 for Lee. John M. and Marcy were the other players. The Carcassone-The Tower game ended up as a real tight three-player affair, final scores were Lee 261, John M. 250, Michele 246.

Eric was interested in playing Big City, a game I had brought, and this one was a really big win for Rodney, 73 points, with Eric coming in dead last with just 27 points behind John W. (53), Amy (51), Greg (48). Most of Eric's "8" neighborhood properties were covered or next to factories, and noone got the big 30 point Shopping Centers in play although we did see both Churches come out.

Greg had brought and wanted to try Container, a favorite of mine that I don't get to play very often. We roped Ron into the game, and the scores were reflective of everyone's relative experience level: John (had played before), first with 39; Greg (had read the rules but not played before), second with 24; Ron (totally new to the game and clueless at the start), third with 19. Think the game plays a bit better with a full table of five (although it would also take longer).

Powerboats was played twice, first race saw Ron come from behind after both Greg and I veered far off course. (Remember what they said about the hare and the tortoise, "slow and steady," well that was Ron in the first race.) Second race, Norman joined in, Greg seized the early advantage and held off a late surge from Ron to win, well ahead of Norman and I. Keeping on the race games theme, we then turned to Snow Tails, a game of Alaskan dog sled racing; Norman won, Greg was second, I had the satisfaction of coming in ahead of Ron for once. Final race game of the evening was a matchup of Ron versus Greg in the Vallco Drag Racing game, Ron kept Shirley Muldowney's winning streak (going back to Games Days a couple of weeks back) intact, taking a real close one over Greg (using Gary Beck's card) via a "holeshot" victory.

Unfortunately, I don't have results for the other games, but I do recall Ron saying the Roll Through the Ages game was a relatively high scoring, close game (something like 29 to 28, I believe Helen one). Another tight finish was reported in the Power Grid game, where Amy was two dollars short of winning, which of course meant the game went another turn and Rodney won by a narrow margin over Eric.

After the event, Lee told me she was interested in trying something similar in the Fall, so here's hoping that will come off and we can attract an even bigger crowd.