Tuesday, January 28, 2014

January 23, 2014 Session Report

We had a group of eight for this week's session:  Patrick, Doug, Mike, Tim, Alex, Ben, Eric and myself.  Four games were played:  American Rails, Compounded, 7 Wonders (played twice) and Carnival.  Compounded and Carnival were both new to the club, having been purchased or won as prizes at the recent Unpub4 convention in Delaware that Mike and I had attended on the prior weekend (Jan. 18-19).

Eric ran away with the American Ralis game, final scores were Eric 146, Ben 120, Tim 87, Patrick 79, Mike 76.  (Another great job of teaching by Mike, who brought up the rear this time.)  The other game was Compounded, which involves putting together chemical elements to form compounds without blowing up the lab.  The game had a real close finish, final scores:  John 68 Alex 65 Doug 57.

Everyone but Alex stayed for the second round of games.  One group played 3-player 7 Wonders and played quickly enough to get two games in.  Scores of Game 1:  Ben 50 Eric 42 Tim 36.  Game 2:  Eric 67 Tim 65 Ben 51.

The rest of us tried Carnival, a card game that Mike had won as a prize at Unpub.  Everyone was trying to become the first to complete three of four carnival rides.  We didn't quite make it to the finish, but Doug was declared the winner (with 2 completed rides and 7 other cards in play), John second (2 rides, 6 cards in play), while Patrick and Mike had one completed ride and were bringing up the rear (although I recall hearing how much better off their position would be after just "one more turn").


Friday, January 17, 2014

January 16, 2014 Session Report

A real good turnout this week.  Eleven in attendance:  Patrick, Mike, Karl, Eric and his son Ryan, Doug, Ben, Neville, Tim, Rembert and myself.  Three games were played:  Euphoria, Legacy:  The Testamant of Duke De Crecy and Lords of Waterdeep.

Lords of Waterdeep, which Eric played with Ryan who had to leave for basketball at 8, did not manage to finish.  The other two games had very close finishes.  In Legacy, which is all about building up a large family tree, Eric grabbed the early lead but his margin shrunk when we got to the endgame scoring categories.  In the end, both Karl and I managed to ease past him.  Final scores:  Karl 55, John  54, Eric 53, Ben 39.

Euphoria was a six-player, and it too, had a very close finish.  Neville managed to get to 10 points first, with Tim and Mike close behind at 9.  Other scores were Rembert 7, Patrick 6 and Doug 5.  I believe Mike and Patrick were the only ones who had played before.

Looking for another good turnout next week!

Friday, January 10, 2014

January 9, 2014 Session Report

Good turnout tonight, and I am pleased to report that everyone was able to get in at least two games, plus the fact that we had two games going throughout the session.  Attendees were Mike, Tim, Neville, Eric, Ben, Karl, Rembert and myself.  We played the following games:  Power Grid (India map), Russian Railroads, Augustus (played twice) and 7 Wonders.

Power Grid with the new India map was a five-player, using the basic deck.  The game ended in Phase 2 when Mike saw he could build out once Eric, who had capacity to build one extra city, lacked the funds to do so.  It came down to the money tiebreaker between Mike and Eric, and Mike won.  Final scores:  Mike 12/37 Eric 12/18 Ben 11 Tim 9/269 Rembert 9/143.  Looks like Ben, Tim and Rembert were left sitting on alot of cash waiting for the Phase 3 card which never came.

Russian Railroads, which was the #1 rated game at this year's Essen (according to the Fairplay poll, made its first appearance at the club.  The game was really close headed into the last turn, and the endgame scoring turned out to be a decisive factor, plus some good industry development which gave me the win.  Final scores:  John 315 Karl 273 Neville 267.  It was everyone's first play, and the game seemed to get a thumbs up from everyone.

Still almost an hour remaining, so the second round of games were  Augustus and 7 Wonders.  The Augustus group whipped through the first game (a 5-player) in something like 15 minutes, and had time for a second game.  The winners were Karl and Mike.  Scores:  Game 1, Karl 60 Mike 52 Neville 47 Eric 27 Tim 23 and Game 2, Mike 51 Tim 44 Karl 39 Eric 14

The other game was a 3-player 7 Wonders.  Ben was the winner.  Scores in that game were Ben 50 John 46 Rembert 38

Friday, January 3, 2014

January 2, 2014 Session Report

Six of us braved the snowy weather and arrived at the club this week for the first session of the new year.  Patrick, Mike, Ben, Neville, John B and I played Caverna:  The Cave Farmers, which is a new game by Uwe Rosenberg that has been billed as the sequel to Agricola.  The game was well received by the group, but we didn't make it to the finish line as a couple of folks had to leave early.  We got through eight of the 12 rounds and scored the game.  I came out the winner, Mike was second, Neville third, scores withheld to protect the innocent but of course things could certainly have changed had we made it through to the end.  Mike, Neville and Patrick chose to go the armed dwarf/Expedition route while the rest of us tried a more peaceful strategy.  John B had been the first to expand to 4 dwarfs, with room for a 5th, so his 5th place position after 8 rounds may have been much better had the game gone to completion.

Two events coming up this weekend: The annual Brunswick Games Day is Saturday, and Sunday is the 1st Sunday of the month which means gaming at Laurel Middle Earth (Rodney Bacigalupo's place), check the GCOM website for details.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

December 26, 2013 Session Report

We had six (Mike, Helen, Alex, John B, Patrick and myself) for this week's session.  We played a game Mike had brought, called Euphoria.  It was a race game (first to 10 VPs) using a rather unique looking board with four different areas or tracks that provided different resources and/or different ways of scoring.  In the end, Helen managed to win the game by earning her last two VPs on Patrick's turn.  Final score counts were Helen 10, Alex 8, John B and John W 7, Patrick 6, Mike 4.  Guess Mike was too busy teaching the game to concentrate on his own play.

Anyway, the session wrapped up a bit early.  On into 2014 then, first session this coming Thursday, January 2nd.