December 10, 2009 Session Report

We had a group of eight for this week's session. Patrick was back for the second week in a row, joined by another new attendee (Trent), along with club regulars Doug, Paul, Clayton, Mike, Greg and myself. We played five different games during the course of the evening, including three games that were played for the first time at the club: Power Grid (Brazil map), Power Grid (Factory Manager) and Sodbusters. Ticket to Ride-Switzerland and Ingenious rounded out the games played list.

First up we had two four-player games, Sodbusters (which Patrick had brought) and Power Grid-Brazil (which I had brought but where Greg took over the role of the "teacher" as I had committed to joining the Sodbusters group). Patrick taught Sodbusters to three would-be farmers: Paul, Doug and myself. Sodbusters is a relatively straightforward game put out last year by a Canadian company, where you start with a parcel of land and a mortgage that you need to try to pay off at some point. The game had quite a bit of luck in it, as Paul got wiped out by a tornado but got back into the game a few turns later with some successful "Prospecting." Then the rest of us got hit by some Indians, which reduced our income considerably. A couple of well-timed oil strikes and Paul was back in contention. We decided to pick up the game around the halfway point when the other game was finishing, and the count at that point had Doug winning with 1230 to 1180 for Paul, then 400-500 each for Patrick and myself. Not sure what would have happened had the game continued, as Patrick had invested alot in land and other infrastructure, but Paul had guaranteed income from a couple of oil wells. Interesting game that left me wanting to try it again, perhaps even buy it, even though there was alot of luck and randomness.

The other game, featuring Greg, Mike, Clayton and Trent, was Power Grid with one of the new maps, Brazil, whose special rule involved production of Biogas (which is the same as the yellow garbage plants in the base game). However, as I noted, the players used the new Power Plant deck although the rules specified the original deck. (I checked on BoardGameGeek where it says they are still working on rules for the newer deck.) Anyway, the game turned out to be a fairly close one, the win going to Greg with an asterisk as apparently the adaption of the game to the new deck led to a couple of anomalies. Anyway, there was alot of talk back and forth between the Power Grid game (talking about "Biogas") and the Sodbusters group (talking about getting into sheep) which was quite entertaining.

We re-split the groups and wound up with one table of three and one of four for the last hour fifteen minutes left in the session. One group (Paul, Doug and Clayton) played some familiar games, first Ticket to Ride-Switzerland and then Ingenious, both of these games were won by Paul. (Scores in the Ingenious game -- 6, 4, and 3 -- seemed really low.) The rest of us (Patrick, Greg, Mike and I) tackled the new Factory Manager which is like Power Grid in some respects, but supposedly alot shorter. Nonetheless, with some new rules and new mechanics we didn't manage to finish the game but I think everyone was willing to give it another try. Scores after three of the five turns had John ahead with 89, Mike at 80, Greg at 61, Patrick 43, but that is probably not very reflective of what the final scores might have been as turn order and double income in the final turn would play a big part. Hope to try the game again real soon.

Again, a reminder, one more session next week before a couple of weeks off for the XMas and New Year's Eve holidays when the CC will be closed.