Gathering Report - Day 4

I awoke, and after breakfast I joined Brian and Jacqui Bankler and Tom Lehmann in a game of Yspahan. Tom was new and the rest of us had all played before. Tom won by building heavily and using the occasional caravan piece. Final scores were Tom:86, Dave:81, Jacqui:68, Brian:65.

Next up was another game of Notre Dame, this time with Scott Simon, Anne Churchill, Tony Soltis, and Brain Fealy. In my first game, I used my carriage a lot, and mostly ignored my rat problem, in this game, I used the park, the hotel, and the hospital almost exclusively, and
scored well, but was second again. Final Scores: Tony:70, Dave:57, Brain:51, Scott:46, Anne:30. I am really enjoying this game, and think it is the best Alea release in a while.

Next up was the eminently forgettable Zooloretto... Think Coloretto, redone with tiles, player boards and a lot more fiddly rules. I will not be buying this. I played with Buzz Aldrich (26), Lisa Johnson (19), Chris LaRue (17), and Kris Gould (15) - I came in last (14).

Then I played Guatamala Cafe with Buzz Aldrich, Dale Yu, and Matthew Baldwin. Ugh. Bad production values, and uninspired gameplay. The beginning 20 minutes were odd, and frustrating, the middle 20 were ok, but the endgame was just awful. Another I will not buy. Dale won with 42 points, followed by Buzz with 27, and Matthew and I with 11 each.

Played a 4 player Imperial game with Curt Churchill, Richard Bethany, and Markus Welbourne (the M in JKLM games...). It was a great game, with a lot of maneuvering and very fluid ownership. At one point or another, I had each of the 6 flags in front of me... Curt won with a
score of 150, followed by Markus at 144, Richard at 132, and me with 127.

Two games with Terry Bailey, Bobby Warren, and Rhonda Bender followed, first was Taluva, which i won buy building all my temples, one tower, and all but 2 huts, Bobby was next because he built all his temples, one tower, and all but 10 huts. Rhonda built all but 1 of each item, and came in third, and poor Terry, who kept getting built over by everyone as he played to easy to exploit places, came in 4th by building no temples, both towers, and all but 3 huts.

Can't Stop was next, which Rhonda won by advancing the 6, 8, and 2.

I then played 2 games of Werewolf, with a ton of people. Ted Alspach moderated the first one, and Heli Barthon the second. Bill Cleary won for the wolves in the first game even though he was outnumbered 9 to 1 when the village lynched the other two wolves on days 1 and 3 (I was lynched on day 1). In game two, the wolves killed me first, but the villagers battled on and won out in the end when Roger Breitenstein could not break up the Mason voting block...

I then played 2 games of Tichu with Christine Simundson and Tom Lehmann, and partnering with W. Eric Martin. Eric and i won both games, with score of 1035 to 265, and 1385 to -85. We had a 1-2/Tichu on the last hand. It was very ugly, and I was a card rack all night, getting 4-5 bombs total, and the 4-kings bomb twice.

I went to bed after getting breakfast. It was 7:00am