September 27, 2012 Session Report

We had eight at this week's session:  Mike, Jason, Tim, Greg, John B, Helen, myself plus Mike P, who was at the club for the first time and brought a game of his own design for us to try.  In addition to a couple of games with Mike P's creation -- called Domination -- we played Piece o Cake, Puerto Rico, Ingenious and Vegas Showdown.   A few details follow.

Greg, Jason and I played Piece o Cake which was the first game to finish.  The scores were incredibly close, and Greg and I were tied for the win at 46, Jason had 43.  We then went on to play Ingenious, and it was another close finish.  Greg and I once again tied for first at 11, but the second worst color had Greg winning (with 12 to my 11), while Jason (at 10) was once again a very close third.

The other group played Puerto Rico,  John B won the game with a whopping 46 points in shipping, and his total score of 55 was higher than that of two of the three remaining players.  Helen, who constructed three large buildings, was runner-up with 48, followed by Mike (45) and Tim (35).

At this point, Greg left and Mike P arrived with a prototype of his design.  Jason and I listened to the rules explanation, and then Mike P and I locked horns in a couple of games.  The game is a two-player, a bit chess-like, where not all the pieces start on the board but where you can gain an extra piece by having your "Commander" piece" sit in a particular area of the board for a few turns.  Unfortunately, whenever that happened the other player tended to try to create a situation where the Commander could be captured.  I managed to "get lucky" and win one game from Mike, while he had the upper hand (or so it seemed) in the second game when we reached the 9 o'clock witching hour.  The game had promise, and would seem to have its greatest appeal to fans of abstract type games.

There was one more game to complete the evening, a four-player Vegas Showdown, played by the same four players as the Puerto Rico game.  This game was a win for Helen.  Scores were Helen 55, Tim 46, Mike 37, John B falling to last at 27 after his excellent showing in the earlier Puerto Rico game.

Once again, it's now less than a week to the next big gaming event, Congress of Gamers, October 6th and 7th at the Rockville Senior Center.  All the information can be found at the website at

http://www.congressofgamers.org