May 27, 2010 Session Report

This week's session had six gamers in attendance: Paul, Greg, Clayton, Ben, Ding and myself. A total of eight different games were played in our last session this year before Memorial Day (and the CC goes to its summer close time of 9 PM).

First up was Lost Cities. Paul and I played a quick hand waiting for everyone to show up. I got the best of it and won, 65 to 26.

Four of us played Tinners' Trail, first time play for everyone. It's a Martin Wallace game that just got re-released as a reprint. Very close scores: John 94, Clayton 88, Greg 86, Paul 78.

By this time Ben and Ding had arrived and occupied themselves by playing a couple of two-player games, first of all TransAmerica and then a couple of games of Ingenious. No details except for the fact that Ben won all three.

Next we played two games of Olympia 2000. Ben won both games, I was last both games, everyone else was somewhere in between. First play for Greg and Ding. Clayton was taking a break but came back for the last round of games.

We then split into two groups for Ticket to Ride-Switzerland and Ra. Ra was a three-player, very close game won by Ben 37 over Greg 36 and myself at 31. Ben took 5 pts. from Greg on ending sun values and that was the difference. The Ticket to Ride Swiss game was a romp for Paul, who make 14 of 15 tickets and won with a score of something like 175. Ding was second, Clayton was third.

We had 20 minutes left, so we wrapped up the session with some balloon-flying with Cloud Nine. Ben, who had not lost a single game yet, was leading most of the way and was the first across the line to 50. However, the balloon trip kept going. At the 20 level I rolled all four die and Greg jumped out to pass Ben and take the lead. But, I had a Wild Card left and managed to win -- an exciting finish. Final scores were John 65, Paul 64, Greg 62, Ben 54, Ding 40, Clayton 36. Probably the highest-scoring game of Cloud Nine ever, three players above 60, finishing with a 25-point trip!

Final reminder, next week we're back to the summer schedule, the sessions will still start at 6 PM but finish at 9 instead of 10.