April 12, 2012 Session Report

Nine for this session, attendees were Rodney, Alex, Jay, Mike, Neville, Doug H, Greg, Rembert and myself.

We played a short warm-up game, Resistance, that went the way of the "bad guys" (Jay, Greg and myself) with one round left to go as Jay did an expert job of reeling the other guys end by letting the first mission succeed and then pointing the finger at a couple of other players who really were "good guys." Everyone else but Rembert participated as this was an eight-player game.

We then split into two groups for the two main games of the evening, which were two recent releases that both used a worker placement mechanism: Lords of Waterdeep and the Manhattan Project. Lords of Waterdeep had five players, final score counts were Doug 148, Mike 133, Alex 127, Jay 121, Rodney 103. Mike's comments on the game: "All players considered it a fun worker placement game; good to teach the mechanism to new players." According to Mike, Doug says "best game ever."

The rest of us played the Manhattan Project, where you are racing to a specific points goal by hiring scientists, engineers, contractors to build bombs, while also obtaining uranium yellowcake and turning it into plutonium or uranium fuel. Greg won this game after Neville seemed to be off to a good start. Greg attacked my position earlier and then coasted to victory; my bombs touched up his bomb-producing ability a couple of turns too late.

In the 20 minutes or so left in the session, we played a quick six-player game of Tsuro, which was won by Jay who I believe was playing the game for the first time. Rodney, Doug, Greg, Rembert and I were the other five players.

In the days since last week's session, I noticed a couple of BGG posts comparing these two games, see links below, indicating once again that the Laurel Club is on the cutting edge of gaming these days.

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/9636/showdown-lords-of-waterdeep-vs-the-manhattan-pr

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/782440/manhattan-project-vs-lords-of-waterdeep