April 16, 2009 Session Report

Attendance was a total of eight for this week's session. Ray was back for his second session (one more and he will become an official GCOM member), along with Gabe, Paul, Clayton, Doug, Mike, Don and myself. We split into two groups for most of the time.

First game up was Money, a five-player game won by Gabe (400) with Paul (330) second, ahead of Mike (290), Doug (270), Don (150). Clayton and I hooked up in an old two-player favorite, Lost Cities, which was close for the first hand (32-29 in my favor) but I did much better (over 100 pts with the eight-card bonus) in the second hand for an overall 140-56 win.

Doug and Paul joined Clayton and me for a four-player Vegas Showdown game that turned out to be very competitive. I jumped out to an early lead, snagging the Nightclub and later the Theatre. However, Doug was way ahead on the income track for much of the game and did well in the endgame scoring to win by just one point. Final scores: Doug 71 John 70 Paul 62 Clayton 54.

The other three (Gabe, Don and Mike) were willing to give Through the Ages a try and, to my surprise, got through all three ages before the end of the session (first time I think this has happened, because it's usually 4 to 4 1/2 hours with three players, longer with four). Final scores were Gabe 180, Don 140, Mike 90. Don was pleased to finish a spot higher than he has in the past, not sure why Mike's score was so low.

Ray joined us while the Vegas Showdown game was still in progress and I think he picked up the rules, so hopefully he will have a chance to play it with us in the future. With five of us, we opted for Ra (Clayton's choice) and Ray, who was the only new player, picked up the game fairly quickly, and won his first game with 47 (an excellent score with five players), I came second with 40, followed by Doug (35), Paul (24), Clayton (15) after it looked like Clayton was going to do better. The one thing I remember was Clayton bidding really high for any flood tiles, which hurt Doug, who lost about 9-10 points in the process although it only gained 3-4 pts for Clayton. I got all 8 monuments but Ray won by seizing the early lead in Pharoahs, keeping it through the rest of the game, also he did well in collecting Civ tiles.

We then played a five-player Hoity Toity starting around 9, final results (first to last) were Doug, John, Clayton, Paul and Ray. Paul was trailing most of the game but came back with the best collection at the end of the game. I had the second best collection, but needed to be first to finish ahead of Doug. Another close second place, like the Vegas Showdown and Ra games.

Finally, we had about 20 minutes left and began a hand of Slide 5 (aka 6 Nimmt, Take 5, Category 5) and got in two hands right before closing time. Clayton was the winner, with only 10 negative points, followed by Doug (15), John (18), Ray (23) and finally Paul (47), who took 34 penalty points in the first round alone.

Hope to see everyone next week.