October 30, 2014 Session Report

'Twas the night before Halloween, and another big turnout at the Laurel CC for gaming -- in fact, one of our largest turnouts of the year, a total of 15 with three games in play for just about the entire time.  Three newcomers (Buffy, Doug, Akshay) joined regular attendees Jeff, Rich, Mike, Andrew, Eric, Greg (whom we hadn't seen for awhile), Evan, Neville, Patrick, Lina, Rembert and myself to play the following games:  Power Grid Deluxe:  Europe, Splendor (played twice), Machi Koro, Dixit, Evolution and the Game of 49.  Some details follow.

First game up was Splendor, a four-player, won by Jeff (15), ahead of Rich and Mike at 10, Andrew at 9.  Jeff got three of the five nobles to seal the win.  This same group played Machi Koro, no scores available, but once again, Jeff was the winner.

Welcomed Greg back to the club with the new Power Grid Deluxe map.  Mike had brought it the prior week to play the North America side, so this week we tried the Europe side.  Eric, Neville and myself were the other players in what proved to be a very close game right to the end.  Greg had not lost his toouch at the game, winning with 17 cities while the rest of us could only build 16.  A key moment was the endgame power plant bidding, where Greg bid both Neville and I to over 70 while he got his cities powered for alot less.  Money tiebreaker for second was John ahead of Eric ahead of Neville, all one city short.

The third table played a six-player Evolution, a recent North Star games release of a game that originally came from Russia but was re-designed with some larger graphics, nicer components and I assume (since I have not played the original) smoother rules.  Winner was Evan, but a wide margin.  Scores:  Evan 58, Doug 28, Rembert and Patrick 26, Lena 20, Buffy 11.

By this time Akshay arrived and he got into a couple of games:  Dixit, won by Andrew (30) ahead of Mike and Akshay (25), Rich (24) and Jeff (17), and a second game of Splendor, with Mike (19) winning ahead of Jeff and Rich (12) and Akshay at 9.

Finally, three of us in the Power Grid game wrapped up with a quick game of 49.  It barely finished before 9, and I managed to win, getting 4 in a row while Eric and Greg, each with 7 chips on the board, had done well enough to reach the maximum payout level.

One more session next week before EuroQuest the following week.  Expect to see a couple of more new games on hand for next week's session.