June 11, 2009 Session Report

Good turnout again this week: Clayton was back after attending the funeral of his father who passed away, and Jonathan also returned after missing a number of sessions. Mike, Paul, Greg, Eric, Doug, Ben, Don, Ray, Christie and I were the other attendees for a grand total of 12. Therefore, we had two, and sometimes three, games going for most of the session. Games played included TransAmerica, Lost Cities, Catan-Germany, Power Grid-Nordic Countries, Roll Through the Ages, Mastermind and Qwirkle Cubes.

TransAmerica and Lost Cities were the two short "starter" games played while waiting for others to show up. TransAmerica game completed just one round, reportedly won by Eric, ahead of Mike, Greg, Paul, Doug and Jonathan. Ben and Clayton got through a hand or two of Lost Cities, no report on who won. I meanwhile had set up our Grand Prix Circus game from last week but again, no results reported, this time because one of the participants (Ron) was absent.

At this point Greg displayed a Power Grid map he had downloaded from BoardGameGeek for the Nordic Countries; he quickly rounded up a full table of gamers. One of the interesting features was the connection costs for Iceland, which ranged from the 60s to the 90s. The Power Grid game took up just about the entire time for the rest of the session and it turned out five of the six players were in a tiebreaker situation, with Don getting the win over Jonathan, Eric, Mike and Greg with Ben bringing up the rear. Everyone seemed to enjoy playing this unofficial Power Grid variant.

Meanwhile, at the other table, Doug had expressed interest in another game of Catan-Germany which I had first brought to the club a few weeks back. This time, as it turned out, it was the same four players (Doug, Clayton, Paul and myself) so not alot of time was needed to teach the game. In part because of the balanced setup, it was a very tight game, and Paul and I were within a point of winning when Doug finished the game off by retaking longest road for his 10th victory point. Clayton was not far behind, either.

Ray and Christie had arrived by this time, and they entertained themselves by playing a couple of two-player games while waiting for our Catan game to finish. They played Roll Through the Ages, which turned out to be a really close, high scoring game that was won by Christie, 38 to 36. (This made up for the negative score Christie had recorded in her initial try a couple of weeks back.) Then Christie asked if we had the game Mastermind, and -- although I wasn't sure we had it -- I suggested they dig through the tub of donated games. Sure enough, the game was there. This, too, was a win for Christie (I don't think Ray had played before) who broke the code in six guesses, don't think Ray was able to break the code in the second half of the game.

There was time for one more game and, with Clayton having to leave early, it was a five-player Qwirkle Cubes. This time Ray did alot better, winning the game with a score of 78 to John (60) and a three-way tie for third at 56 among Doug, Paul and Christie with Doug and Paul actually having had an extra turn before Ray ended the game.