Wednesday, March 28, 2012

March 22, 2012 Session Report

Eight for tonight's session, including one first-time attendee. Patrick, Jay, Mike, Doug, Greg, Rembert, Adam (the first-timer) and myself were in attendance. Games played: Timeline, Vegas Showdown, Drum Roll and San Juan.

Timeline was our warm-up game and was won by Mike, with "Black Powder" being the winning card. Greg was second, Patrick third and surprisingly, Doug (who is our club expert at these sort of games) was a non-place. Alot of the "educated guesses" were off by a year or two, which made for an interesting game. Jay and myself rounded out the group as we had six for this one.

We split into two groups, and Adam and Rembert joined us. One group played Vegas Showdown, a long-time club favorite. This game was won by Greg, but it was a close one. Final scores: Greg 60, Adam 56, Mike and Jay 46, Rembert 41. I believe it was Adam's first play of the game, and he came home a creditable second.

Meanwhile, Patrick, Doug and I tackled Drum Roll, a fall 2011 Essen release which is about managing a circus. I had played just once before, first time for Doug and Patrick. The game moved slowly at first but picked up after people had mastered the mechanics. The strategy was another question. Patrick had done a good job getting money and collecting cubes with alot of bonus "Investor" cards. But Doug had done a solid job selling tickets for all three shows and emerged the winner, with Patrick a close second. I, obviously, came last, with my excuse being I was the teacher for the game. Hope to try it again soon.

We barely finished the game before the 9 PM witching hour, and the other table, which had started a San Juan game, did not finish. Mike, Jay, Adam and Rembert were the four players, and Mike and Jay had 10 cards down when time ran out.

Hope to see everyone again next week, including a couple of you who have been AWOL for the last session or two.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

March 15, 2012 Session Report

Getting caught up on these session reports, here's the most recent one.

Another week of double-figure attendance, a total of 12. Present and accounted for were Mike, Jay, Patrick, Rodney, Ron, Kevin, Neville, Doug, Alex, Greg, Rembert and myself. It literally was a three-ring circus as we broke into three groups after starting off with a couple of games of Resistance.

Resistance was played by John, Mike, Greg, Kevin, Jay, Ron, Neville and we added Rembert to the group for the second game. The first game was won by the Government (i.e. the "bad guys" who foiled the missions) who were Greg, Jay and Mike. Ron and I started accusing Neville falsely, then Neville started accusing me and by the time we got it all straightened out, it was too late. The "Good Guys" (the Resistance) won game two, with Ron, Neville and Rembert coming out on the short end).

Alex, Doug, Rodney and Patrick played a Z-Man release, Heads of State, which Patrick had brought. Final scores were Alex 110, Rodney 90, Doug 85, Patrick 32.

Helvetia was played, taught by Mike. Scores in that one were Mike 20, Jay 19, Neville 14 and Kevin 12.

Finally got in a game of Village, one of my new favorites. It was a three-player and we actually cut it short and scored as if the game was over. I won with 54 but Ron (who had already left) was a close second with 52, Rembert had 43. I think Rembert like the game but Ron did not.

Looking forward to continuing our record of strong attendance next week!

March 8, 2012 Session Report

Looks like I am getting a bit behind in posting these session reports.

For Thursday, March 8th, we had 10 gamers in attendance: Kevin (here for his first session), Ron, Neville, Jay (who has now attended three sessions), Mike, Tim, Patrick, Doug, Rembert and myself. We played Last Will, Agricola and Timeline.

Last Will, which I missed out on the first game, is a game with a unique objective: You need to spend all your money, and also sell off all your property, and the player who is most negative wins. The game can last 7 turns, this one ended a turn early (turn 6). Final scores: John -6, Kevin -1, Ron and Neville 3, Mike 7. Lowest negative score (that's me) was the winner, so I ended Neville's streak at one and started a new one for myself that I am sure will end the next time I play.

Agricola was a win for Patrick, who has been itching to play the game for some time. Final scores were Patrick 35, Doug 29, Tim 27, Jay 17.

Those of us in the Last Will game were joined by Rembert for a game of Timeline. I believe I won that one as well, to go undefeated for the evening (a rarity for me).

Monday, March 5, 2012

March 1, 2012 Session Report

Attendance-wise, this was one of our best sessions in a long time. We had 12 people total, including just about all the "regulars" and several recent and sporadic attendess. The list for this week: Patrick, Tim, Mike, John, Doug H, Neville, Greg, Ron, Rembert, Eric, Alex, Jay (back for his third session) and myself.

Started with a game of TransAmerica that broke up after one round. Then, it was literally a three-ring circus as we split into three groups, three games at once, all 4-player. First game to finish was JetSet, won by Greg. Players and scores: Greg 30, Eric 25, Jay 16, Rembert 15. I was in the Helvetia game, and the scores there were Alex 23, Mike 20, John 19, Doug 10 (Mike and I had played once before, Alex and Doug were new to the game). Alex was randomly drawn as the first player, don't know if there's a built-in edge to going first or not, there could be.

The other group played Power Grid-First Sparks, the winner was Patrick (15), followed by Tim 12, Ron 12, Neville 11. The JetSet group was already wrapping up a game of 7 Wonders, scores were Eric and Greg 54 (Eric winning on the tiebreak which is most money), Jay 46, Rembert 31. Then there was another game of TransAmerica, won by Neville, scores were Neville 13, Patrick 6, Eric and Tim 4. Looks like from the scores that Neville won every round, although time ran out before the game could finish.

The rest of us got in a couple of plays of a trivia-line game Doug had brought called Time Line, Greg won the first game, Doug the second. We made Doug go last which was kind of a disadvantage, the second game he still won going next to last.

I was pleased to see the strong attendance, hope we can keep it up. GCOM will once again be running a booth at the Laurel Main St. Festival, Sat. May 12th.

Also, condolences to Patrick who lost his father recently.