October 22, 2009 Session Report

Just six for this week's session, as Eric S. joined Clayton, Doug, Mike, Paul and I for an evening of gaming at the Community Center. We played a total of seven different games: Owner's Choice, Endeavor, Thurn and Taxis, Anno 1503, Stone Age, Vegas Showdown and Ingenious.

First up was Owner's Choice, a relatively new Z-Man product that I had picked up recently after trying it a couple of times. Quick playing, stock market manipulation game, this one was won by Eric with 1150 followed by John (1070), Mike (850), Doug (480) and Paul (470). A couple of the players were hurt when one of the companies went belly up and thus ended with less money than they started.

By this time Clayton had arrived and we split into two groups of three for the rest of the evening. One group (consisting of Doug, Paul and Eric) got in a total of four more games. One was Thurn and Taxis, which Doug won by a huge margin over Paul with Eric far, far behind. Then it was Anno, where Eric turned the tables with Doug second. Then a really tight Vegas Showdown game came down to the money tiebreak and Doug prevailed over Eric. Then Eric wrapped up his mini-winning streak by taking Ingenious, 13 to 11 (Doug) to 9 (Paul).

The rest of us (Mike, Clayton and myself) played another recent Z-Man release, Endeavor, which has been getting alot of favorable comment recently. Clayton and Mike, both playing for the first time, managed to beat me with Clayton coming out on top (52 to 45 for Mike and 44 for John). We then played Stone Age, which took the rest of the evening, and it turned out to be a mirror image of the T&T game at the other table with wide gaps opening at the end. Final scores on that one: John 298, Mike 178, Clayton 59. My highest scoring Stone Age game ever!

Anyway, I have been a bit disappointed by attendance recently which has fallen into single digits. Hopefully, some of you who have been no-shows recently will return to boost our club's attendance next week as there are plently of cool new games to try out!