July 9, 2009 Session Report

Attendance in double figures (10) this week, as Mike, Ron, Paul, Greg, Ben, Don, Clayton, Christie, Neil and I took part in the gaming festivities. Ron had brought the newer Avalon Hill version of Risk, Risk 2210 AD I believe it's called, and played a three-player game with Don and Christie that took most of the evening. Winner was Christie (20 territories) ahead of Don (12) and Ron (7). Later Christie told me she could have wiped the two guys off the map, but of course she had the win well in hand, and hey, that wouldn't have been very lady-like, would it?

The other table saw a variety of different games being played. Five of us who were there early played a quick 5-player R-Eco which I won with a really high score of 25; don't think I have had a better game or even seen as high a score, either; I got three colors that counted with no minuses, although I did dump once (bad Ecology karma there). Mike, Ben, Paul and Greg were the other players but I am not reporting their scores to save them the embarrassment. (No one else got into double figures.)

Then six of us played a game that Ben had brought, called Doodle Dice, that was supposed to take about 15-20 minutes but seemed to drag on a bit longer than necessary. The idea was to collect six different colors of cards, but there was this rule that Ben strictly enforced that you had to draw a card before rolling the dice or you forfeited a turn. This rule hit just about all of us except Ben and Clayton, who of course were sitting next to the draw deck. Anyway, it should be no surprise that Ben won the game after Paul, Mike and I all got close but then blocked or "stole" from each other or, in my case, simply rolled the dice before flipping a card.

With the Tour de France underway, I brought a cycling game called Giro d'Italia, which is essentially Leader 1 (a new game from last year) with some more bells and whistles (and sturdier cyclist pieces!!!) that was re-issued in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Giro d'Italia (the Italian equivalent of the Tour of France). Greg, Ben and I had some fun with the game, setting up a variant of a pre-made course from BoardGameGeek using some surrogates for some all-time great cyclists. Ben had an all-American team of Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer and George Hincapie but he used up Leipheimer early and then Hincapie, instead of helping out his team leader Lance, went on to take the third podium position for himself. Greg did a masterful job of setting up his team leader, "Master Jacques" Anquetil to the win, powering his way through the last downhill session to blow past the field to the finish line. I managed a second place with "The Cannibal," Eddy Merckx, who as cycling aficanados know, is the greatest cyclist of all time. Ben took third, fourth and fifth and would have won a team prize had there been one.

Unfortunately for me, the cycling game meant I would miss out on playing one of my favorites, Vegas Showdown which was played at the same time. This was a four-player game that was fairly close and won by Neil (74) ahead of Paul (56), Mike (56) and Clayton. This same group played a game of Power Mage, which (according to my latest information) we may be getting a visit from the game designer at next week's session on the 16th.

Finally, there were a few minutes left after we cleaned up the cycling game, so Ben, Greg and I played another card game called Stone Soup which Ben won. I think Greg and I are still trying to figure the game out, at least I am.

Hope to see everyone next week, including some of you who haven't been there in recent weeks ...