Friday, October 8, 2010

October 7, 2010 Session Report

We had an attendance of seven for this week's session: Doug, Paul, Don, Greg, Rodney, Patrick and myself. After the usual discussion of what games to play, we split into two groups: One group played a series of shorter games, while the other group (of three) played basically one game, Shogun, which Patrick had brought and wanted to get in some teaching and playing time because he's demoing at another gaming event. His opponents in the game were Don and Greg. Either Patrick was a really good teacher or a really bad player, either way he came out on the bottom: final score count was Don the winner (39), Greg second (31) and Patrick third and last (25).

The other group played the following games:

1. ShowManager. Four-handed, which meant we had two "dummy" par values on the board to occupy the remaining two slots. Final scores: John 52 (a rare victory for me in this game), Doug 50, Rodney 42, Dummy #1 34, Paul 25, Dummy #2 17.

2. Vegas Showdown. I tried a different strategy, going for income early and sort of ignoring the points-paying buildings (except when there was Fancy Lounge out there). It worked! I managed to get the Theater one turn and then have enough dough for the Space Age Sports Book a turn or two later. Final scores: John 77, Rodney 62, Doug 56, Paul 51. Game note: Paul monopolized all the Table Games (getting all 3) and the High Roller Rooms (getting both). As you can see from the scores, that strategy did not work, at least in this game.

3. Innovation: Three of us had fooled around with this new card game a couple of weeks back, but this is the first full playing at the club. Turns out Rodney came away the big winner, getting four achievements when no one else had more than one. Seems to me there may be a front-runner problem with this one, don't like the idea of not having to turn in any cards at all from your score-pile when you claim an achievement (other than a Special Achievement). Reviews on this game so far are mixed at best.

4. Final game of the evening, after Rodney took his leave, was Parlay. Doug started off like a house on fire and had over 300 points after the first 2-3 hands. Looked like he was headed for a runaway win until he stalled out, then Paul started putting together some long words, lot of points, etc., and he wound up the winner with 610 (first to 500 wins), Doug had 435, I had a paltry 245 (the only hand I think I won was when the other two folded when they had more points than me).

Anyway, looking forward to the third edition of Congress of Gamers this weekend in Rockville, hope to see many of you there; if not, hope to see y'all next week.

No comments: