Germantown 06/18/2007

Sorry for the delay in getting these posted. Attending on this night were:

• Kevin Bealer
• Aubrey Bell
• Leslie Barkley
• Dave and Martha Briggs
• Rose Byington
• Dave Fair
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob Jones
• David Raley
• Eric Reinhold
• Bill Salvatore
• Bill Trac

As I arrived, Leslie, Eric, Rose, David R, Aubrey and Doug were finishing up the second of two games of the incredibly random, yet fun, Eco Fluxx. Eric won the first game while Aubrey skillfully manipulated his cards to claim his goals and win the second game.

In the meantime, Dave Fair and Bill Trac played the two-player games Elk Fest and Lost Cities. Bill had the more nimble flicking fingers and so was better able to maneuver his Elk, winning Elk Fest. The scores for Lost Cities were Bill 179, Dave 130, both very high scores!

We then broke up into two groups. I have been bringing Dragon Delta for the past several sessions and was happy to have five other willing players -- Bill Trac, Leslie, Dave Fair, David Raley, and Aubrey. The goal of this unique game is to move your guy across the delta by placing stones, then planks, then racing across. It became quite a mess near the center of the board as most of the players tried to bypass each other while keeping their neighbors from gaining a clear line to victory. Eventually, three players were all in a position to win. Dragon stopper-cards kept two of them from their goal, giving Aubrey the chance to maneuver his guy to the other side.

At the same time, Eric, Martha, David Briggs, Rose and Doug played the mighty cow game, Zoff im Buffalo. I've only played this once; I should really try to get in a game soon. Full scores weren't reported but Eric won with David close behind.

At that point, Bill Salvatore and Kevin had arrived so we split up into three groups. Bill joined Martha, David Briggs, and Aubrey for Blue Moon City with expansions. In a hard fought game, David gathered a large number of crystals and then in one burst placed three cubes on the higher levels of the monument. He ended up placing his fourth and winning the game soon after.

David Raley, Leslie and Kevin decided to play the excellent-with-any-number-of-players game, San Juan. Leslie was able to get the only "6" buildings into play, giving her the margin of victory. Her final score was 25 to David's 20 and Kevin's 17.

Finally, I was joined by Doug, Dave Fair, Bill Trac, and Eric for my favorite game Taj Mahal. Everyone had played before except Bill so after a quick rules explanation, we were soon peddling influence in the provinces of India. Doug and Bill got off to a very early lead with Eric and I struggling behind. Dave skipped several provinces and scoring opportunities in order to horde cards. When he finally brought out his big guns, Eric had decided to fight for the same province. Dave spent a ton of cards and got nothing, putting him in a terrible position. A few provinces later, the same thing happened but Dave was the winner that time, crippling Eric. With Dave and Eric taking each other out, I caught up to Bill and Doug using my chains of palaces which were scoring big points. Bill then fell behind as he stopped finding scoring opportunities. On the last turn, I shot ahead, only to have Doug's final card tally give him three additional points and tie the game! Doug and I shared the victory. What a great game!

That's all for this session. Hope to see you on the 2nd!