Friday, May 29, 2009

May 28, 2009 Session Report

Strong attendance of 11 for our first shortened session (new close time of 9 PM); Ben and Ray returned, along with Paul, Mike, Gabe, Don, Ron, Christie (back for her second session), Tim (making his first appearance at the Laurel club in many months), Rodney, and myself; all these people despite missing two regulars (Clayton, who was still out of town and Doug, who was co-hosting at another games club). We played a total of five different games: Ticket to Ride (1910), Agricola, Hoity Toity, Cloud Nine (x2) and Roll Through the Ages.

Ticket to Ride-1910 was a five-player game, saw everyone building into New York to set up some long run tickets, then later things got crowded near Los Angeles and Las Vegas. I was stuck on the short end of the stick, unable to complete two long tickets before the game ended. Everyone else did well, garnering over 100 points. Tim won with 147, followed by Paul, Christie, Ron, yours truly in last. Tim had the honor of lapping me on the scoring track as I had a final score of just 44.

The other group (Gabe, Mike, Don, Ben and Rodney) played Agricola. I understand, with some players new to the game, they elected to play the Family Game which still ran about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Winner with 39 points was Gabe (an excellent score if they were playing without those extra cards in the main game), followed by Rodney (28), Ben (21), Don (20) and Mike (16).

Ray joined the five of us from the Ticket to Ride game for Hoity Toity, which is the six-player version of Hook or Crook (aka the art collecting game). Lots of thieving and just about everyone was fairly close on the scoring track heading into the final few game turns. Christie, who had gone out to an early lead, stalled out a bit as she had both her thieves in jail and was down to only a handful of art after being the victim of repeated thievery from the other players. I managed to put together the best collection at the end, and finished ahead of Ray (who led into the final show), then Paul, Christie, Ron (who had second best collection) and finally Tim, so Tim and I reversed positions from the prior game.

There was still time for a couple of more games before the 9 PM closing time. Paul, Rodney, Tim, Ron, Ray and I played Cloud Nine, Paul won the first game with Rodney in second, we started a second game which had Ray ahead until a late balloon crash put him behind Paul right before we had to stop. They both had around 40 points or so.

At the other table, the game was Roll Through the Ages. Gabe won that one, 24 points to 13 for Mike and just -12 for Christie whose people suffered mightily from pestilence spread by the others. Oh, well, it was Christie's first play of the game, so there's always next time ...

Hoping for continued strong attendance next week ...

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