Gathering Report - Day 2

I started the day out by teaching Pillars of the Earth to Mario Lanza, and Jennifer Schicklenberg, and Jim McDonald joined us. It was a great and close game, with 1st-4th spread being only 8 points.

Next up was 6-player Imperial. I leaped out to an early lead when I was able to quickly grab 3 countries, tax them all, and have a ton of money. The early lead made me a target, so I ended up coming in second. great game. Joe Rushanan won, I was second, Brian Leet 3rd, Leo Tischer 4th, Ravindra Prasad 5th, and Mario Lanza, one of the 4 players new to the game, was 6th.

I then played Leonardo DaVinci with Dan & Julie Luxenberg (who live in Montgomery Village, and are going to join us at DGN soon, they said), Brian Stallings, and Bobby LaBoon. This was a learning game for Bobby and Julie. I got very lucky, winning all of the blind bids I was involved in and amassing 6 cards total at the end, with all 5 symbols, for a 19 point victory over second place. Yowza! Brian came in second, followed by Julie, Dan, and Bobby.

We then left for dinner at Buco de Bepo, and it was terrific: Escarole, Pesto Salmon, Chicken Glorioso, and Baked Manicotti followed up by cheesecake. Molto!

After dinner, I played Yspahan with Matthew Monin (octavian on the geek), Dan Blum, and Tery Noseworthy. I had another luck filled game, amassing much coinage and using both coins-to-VP's cards to get 19 points on the last day, and scoring the caravan solo all three weeks for 3, 14, and 27 VPs. I won with a score of 90, a 22-point gap over Tery, who beat Dan by 2, who beat Matthew by 4.

ShowManager was played next, and I did horribly, coming in 5th out of 6. I just couldn't ever get anything I needed. I had no show higher than 3rd in any city. Ugly. Tery Noseworthy won with an impressive 59 points, then it was Buzz Aldrich, Charlie Davis, Brian Leet, Me, and Zev Schlasinger. Fun time, and nice in that no one had to be taught the game for once...

Next we played Smarty Party, and I realized that we have been playing one or two minor things wrong, so we have to fix that for the next game. Warren Madden won, as he has a great grasp of geography and politics (he is a meteorologist for the Weather Channel) and there were a lot of cards in his areas of expertise. Also playing were Nate Beeler, Lisa Johnson, Kevin O'Brien, Ray Dennis, Matthew Monin, and Evan Tannheimer.

I played a quick game of Taluva next, with Kevin, Evan, and Warren. I was able to eke out a win by building all but one Temple, all towers, and all but 3 huts. Warren was second with 1/0/5, followed by Kevin with 1/07, and Evan with 1/1/2. Very close game.

The last game of the night was Santy Anno, which we played with all the tough expansion cards. It was horribly difficult, especially as late as we were playing..I did awfully, coming in 4th, followed by Evan, Warren, and Matthew took the win.

I called it a night at went to bed. It was 4:00 am...