February 4, 2010 Session Report

Another cold wintry evening and we still had ten gamers in attendance, including one first-timer to visit our club. Roll call: Mike, Doug H, Paul, Ron, Don, Clayton, Patrick, Ben, Ding (first timer -- friend of Ben's) and myself. Games played: R-Eco, Giro D'Italia, Lost Cities, Homesteaders, Maori and Racko. Some details follow.

First up was R-Eco, played by the five of us who arrived at or near the 6 PM start time. Final scores were close: John 9 Doug and Mike 7 Paul 5 Ron 3. I won by getting the last chip and ending the game. Mike was the only player who didn't dump, yet he still had an impressive stack of chips by the end of the game. It was Ron's first play.

Ron and I had brought Giro D'Italia, the cycling game (original version was called Leader 1) and we had boned up on the rules. Don, Clayton, and eventually Ben joined up so we went with all 15 cyclists (5 teams of 3 each), something the rules warned against and, as a result, we had a bit of a traffic jam heading to the finish line and much longer race than any of us anticipated. Still, it was fairly exciting and Don had two of his cyclists positioned at the head of the field coming off the final turn. I was right behind, took a risk to try to catch up, and unfortunately had a fall that took my top guy out of contention. Clayton was right behind, but he asked me to make his final set of moves for him and I did, succeeding on the die roll where I had failed with my own guy. While Don was still ahead, his lead guy ran out of energy and finished one space short of the finish line. This gave the win to Clayton, but I think Don would have won easily if none of us had taken a risk. Ben and Ron wound up being the also-rans.

There were other games being played. Homesteaders, probably our most popular game thus far in 2010, was played once again, with Patrick once again coming out on top, final scores were Patrick 57, Doug 50, Paul 46, Mike 44. Doug did quite well to get second in his first game. A question arose about whether or not resources (gold, in this instance) were limited by the counter-mix, and it turns out the answer I gave off the cuff, that they were not, is in fact the official interpretation as posted by the game designer on BoardGameGeek.

Ben and Ding played three hands of Lost Cities, with Ben multi-tasking while playing Giro D'Italia, and Ding came back after falling behind in the initial hand to score an overwhelming victory, 114 to 50, to win in her first game at the games club. Perhaps if Ben had been focusing on either one game or the other instead of trying to play two games at once he would have done a bit better.

For the other two games, no highlights, just the scores as the cycling race was just too intense:

Maori: Doug 49 Patrick 44 Mike 33 Paul 31 Ding 15

Racko: Doug 320 Paul 205 Ding 115

WEATHER REMINDER: Anyone who is unsure whether or not there will be a club session due to inclement weather is advised to call the Community Center office by around 5 PM The number there is (301)-497-0300.