January 12, 2012 Session Report

Attendance was down a bit, but we still had seven which meant two games going for most of the session. Doug, Tim, Patrick, Neville, Greg, Rembert and myself were the attendees and we played a couple of lower games, Steam and the recently released Ora and Labora, plus Rembert and I played a game of Can't Stop while the longer games were going on.

Ora and Labora was the latest game from Uwe Rosenberg, creator of Agricola, Bohnanza and LeHavre, and the game definitely had a LeHavre-like feel to it. Neville, Doug and I were the guinea-pigs for this one, where the players play the role of monks building up the economy in the area around their monastery. It was an extremely close game, final scores were John 174, Neville 172, Doug 164 -- I pulled it out with a nice build and cash-in on the final play although Neville pointed out he could have claimed a tie with a better location for one of his last settlements. I actually thought Doug was winning, that's how close it was.

The other game (Steam) was played by Greg, Patrick and Tim and it, too, was a close finish that came down to the tiebreak. Greg and Tim were tied at 59, Patrick was not far behind at 50. The tiebreak was highest income level, which meant Tim was the winner.

The Can't Stop game turned out to be another come from behind win for me, I got three numbers to the top after Rembert cashed in on the 2 column -- but he didn't get another number the rest of the way, bombing out with some bad rolls at crucial moments.