Wednesday, January 30, 2013

January 24, 2013 Session Report

A cold, wintry day so only five showed for this week's session:  Patrick, Doug, Mike, Tim and myself.  This session featured all new games:  Tzolk'in:  The Mayan Calendar Game, Copycat and Myrmes.

I had brought Tzolk'in which is "dynamic worker placement" using a unique set of moving gears, and played with Patrick.  Patrick killed me, using the Chicken Itza crystal skull wheel to pile up an unassailable points lead.  Final scores:  Patrick 72, John 54.

Copycat -- the Friedmann Friese title which borrows heavily from other games, like Dominion, Through the Ages, Power Grid, Agricola and Puerto Rico -- was a three-player, and I remember during the game hearing "Doug is killing us," but the final score report shows a close game, with Doug not being the winner:  Mike 86, Doug 84, Tim 81.

The final game was Myrmes, the ant colony game which Patrick had brought, which unfortunately only made it through a couple of turns.  So, no report although I believe Patrick was ahead when we had to pick it up.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

January 17, 2013 Session Report

Eight for tonight's session:  Patrick, Ben, Mike, Eric, Nathan, Ryan, Tim and myself.  Games played were 7 Wonders, Village and Suburbia.

7 Wonders was (guess what?) a 7-player, with Tim showing up a few minutes late so he missed out.  Scores were Mike 50, Eric, John and Nathan at 47, Ben 46, Ryan 39 and finally Patrick at 31.  Tim was supposedly helping Ryan some but apparently Patrick was the one that needed the most help.

Anyway, after this we split into two groups.  Three of us played Village, which finished with about a half hour left in the session.  It was an intense, close game that went to Mike, with 68 to my second place score of 63 while Ben, who hit all the neighboring villages, was third with 55.  Mike combining some big time scoring at both the Market and the Church to score the win.  After the game, Mike observed that only player meeples (no neutral meeples) were drawn out of the bag at the Church.

The last game to finish (and I believe they had to cut it one round short) was Suburbia.  Patrick bounced back from the 7 Wonders debacle to score a nice, solid win, with 83 points, Tim a distant second at 64, followed by Eric (58) and Ryan (51).

Thursday, January 17, 2013

January 10, 2013 Session Report

Nine in attendance for this week's session:  Patrick, Ben, John B, Alex, Mike, Tim, Doug, Rembert and myself.   Three games were played:  Suburbia, Eclipse and Masons.

First game to finish was Suburbia.  Mike had obviously sharpened his play from last week's game, taking a decisive win over Alex, Doug and myself.  Final scores:  Mike 140, Alex 95, John W 90, Doug 61.  Not sure about Doug, but it was Alex's first play. Mike and I had a couple of plays under our belt.

The four of us from the Suburbia game then played Masons, which Doug had brought.  To my surprise, I eked out a win in a very very close game.  Final scores:  John W 124, Doug 123, Mike 117, Alex 108.  First play for both Mike and Alex, I believe.

The Eclipse game managed to get 7 of the scheduled 9 rounds complete before the 9 PM stop time.  Scores were counted, and Patrick had the most points:  Patrick 33, Tim 26, Ben 15, John B 13, Rembert 12.

For this week's session, there's some inclement weather on the horizon but the forecast suggest most of the snow accumulation will be further South.  If you are in doubt as to whether or not the session is on or not, please call the Community Center at (301)-497-0300 by around 5 PM of the day in question.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

January 3, 2013 Session Report

First session of the new year, and we had eight in attendance:  Mike, Doug, John B, Patrick, Eric, Helen, Tim and myself.  Games played:  Martian Dice, Suburbia. Anno 1503 and Cloud Nine.

First game up was Martian Dice, which was the warm-up game while waiting for people to show up.  It didn't last long, one time around the table.  John B had the high score of 7, Doug 6, Mike 4, Patrick and John 0.

We split into two groups for the rest of the evening; Mike, Tim and I played a recent Essen release that Eric had brought, Suburbia.  Tim won a close game with Eric and I not far behind, while Mike tried a different approach which didn't work.  Scores:  Tim 87, John W 84, Eric 83, Mike 52.

Doug, Patrick, Helen, John B played Anno.  John B was the winner, while all the other players only managed to accomplish one of the victory conditions (it takes three to win).

Finally, we wrapped up the evening with Cloud Nine, which barely managed to finish.  Eric won with 52 after I jumped out of the balloon a bit too soon, placing second with 48.  The also-rans were Helen (31) and Doug (28) who crashed after Eric established a high bar for the final balloon trip.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

December 27, 2012 Session Report

We ended the year with a really down week, attendance-wise.  Co-host Mike couldn't make it, so it was just three of us:  Patrick, Ben and myself.  We played three games:  Piece o Cake, Village and Netrunner.

Piece o Cake was the quick opener while waiting for others to show up which, this week, didn't happen, unfortunately.  Scores were John 45, Ben 37, Patrick 28.

We then played Village, which Patrick had brought.  The game was new to Ben, who played a really competitive game and almost won.  Scores (with an asterisk) were John 43, Ben 42, Patrick 36.  The reason for the asterisk is we got the turn sequence wrong one time after Patrick had taken the ring but, by mistake, I went first since I had been going first on the prior turn.  This probably hurt Patrick the most, so he might have had a much higher score, but we were already too far into the turn to go back and reconstruct.

Final game was a two-player, as Ben left and Patrick taught me another game he had recently bought, Netrunner.  Or perhaps the name is Netrunner: Android.  Anyway, it's a card game where one player is a Corporation and the other is a Hacker trying to break into the corporation's computer systems.  We didn't get very far into the game when time ran out.  Patrick was maybe a turn away from scoring two points for getting an Asset to the scoring pile, so I guess you could say he was the winner.

Anyway, good wishes to everyone for a Happy New Year.  Let's get 2013 off to the right start with some good attendance this week!