June 18, 2009 Session Report

Attendance of nine this week: Ron, Don, Doug, Paul, Greg, Clayton, Eric, Christie and myself. We played Ingenious, Ticket to Ride - Nordic, Grand Prix Circus, Snow Tails, Power Grid (Benelux map) and Cloud Nine.

Greg, Doug and Paul played a couple of games while Ron, Don and I were busy for most of the first hour with Grand Prix Circus. They played a couple of three- player games, Ingenious, followed by Ticket to Ride-Nordic, both of which were won by Greg.

The Grand Prix Circus game was the first race of a season-long series where Don, Ron and I are controlling Formula 1 Grand Prix race teams based on real-life results in 2001. Ron did well in the first race of the year at Australia, with a one-two finish for Hakkinen and Coulthard, but Don (the Williams team) and myself (Ferrari) expect to change things in upcoming races. Thanks to Clayton for helping to get us through the initial race in a timely manner. Based on the first race, looks like it takes us around an hour to complete a race with all the paperwork.

By this time Eric and Christie had arrived, so we split into two groups for the main games of the evening, which were a five-player Power Grid using the Benelux map and a four-player Snow Tails game. No report on who won in Snow Tails, but I know Don, Ron, Clayton and Doug were handling the "mushing" duties. Since I was in the Power Grid game, I can report it came down to tiebreaker (money) between Greg and me, with Greg getting the nod by about 15 electros. Good, close game that finished in around 1 hour 40 minutes, even with one new player (Christie) who didn't seem to have too many problems picking up the rules fairly quickly.

That left us with about 20 minutes for a favorite short filler to take us up to 9 PM, which once again was Cloud Nine. Christie and Eric were first-time balloon pilots, along with Doug, Paul, John and Greg who had all played before. However, Greg looked like the novice, crashing the balloon four times in a row and taking a long time to even get his token on the board. By that time Doug was already around the 30-40 point range, and Christie had a nice 20-point solo ride (with aid of a well-timed Wild Card play). As the clock struck nine, Doug bailed out of the balloon to trigger the end, going to 51 points. But Christie survived one more pilot die roll to pass him, bailing out to get one more point at 52. The balloon then crashed before anyone could beat her score, so Christie was the winner. Greg, who had come into the Cloud Nine after winning all his prior games for the night, finished well behind in last. Nice going, Christie.