Damascus 09/07/07

Due to the temporary closure of the Damascus Community Center, the September 7 session was held at the Scott Fisher's in Middletown and the Jones house in Germantown. Below is the summary of the Germantown event.

Attending were:

• Kevin Bealer
• David Briggs
• Martha Briggs
• Rose Byington
• Melinda Carbonell
• Ruben Carbonell
• Jason Cheng
• Ben Jones
• Bob Jones
• Carol Jones
• Rachel Jones
• Raphael Lehrer
• Marshall Miller
• Rick Pasquale
• Bill Trac

Records were kept a bit haphazardly so I don't have completely accurate information. What I do have is below.

We immediately split into two groups. At first my group thought we had six players, so we decided on Union Pacific. Then we realized we had five but since we had already set up UP, we decided to stick with it. This was fortunate, as Marshall showed up before the end of the first turn and joined us. Jason took an early lead with uncontested majorities in several lines that he maintained until the last scoring round. Unfortunately for him, he lost the majority in several rail lines on the last few turns and succumbed to a strong surge by Dave and Rose. Final scores were Dave Fair (104), Rose (95), Jason (85), Rick (84), Bob (66), and Marshall (61).

Meanwhile, Martha cleaned up in Ticket to Ride: 1910 against Carol, Raphael and Dave Briggs. This was a somewhat bizarre game as Raphael completed the most tickets with a whopping four. That's a very low number for TTR, especially when using the expansion.

Since Dave had been talking up Stephenson's Rocket in his Geek of the Week thread, I made sure to bring SR to the table. Rose and Kevin were new to the game and took a while to figure out all the different options available. They did pretty well and if another game had been played afterwards, the scores would have been very different. As it was, experience took the day as I ended up with the most stock in the remaining rail lines and scored boatloads of points in the final scoring. Scores were Bob (83), Dave (66), Kevin (47), Rose (43).

The big game of the night was a dark and stormy game of Shadows over Camelot with Raphael, Carol, Dave Briggs, Martha, Jason, Rick and Marshall. Things went very badly for the Knights of the Round Table and although many suspicions were cast about, no one was accused of being the traitor. With the number of black and white swords equal at five each, good would win when it came to Marshall's turn. Unfortunately for the good guys, Rick's turn came up before Marshall and he was able to ensure a Pict/Saxon invasion which added two black swords to the table, meaning that evil won. Fortunately for Rick, he was the Traitor and won the game. Afterwards, several people said they suspected Rick, but none had accused him.

At some point in the evening, Bill, Melinda and Ruben foolishly took on Noreen at her best game, Can't Stop. They were soon to learn the error of their ways as Noreen won (probably handily as she's fairly unbeatable at this game).

After some people had left, Dave and I were temporarily without a group. So we broke out the fast-playing tile-laying game Ingenious Travel. I managed to block off all the tiles of Dave's lowest color, limiting his scoring potential. I ended up winning with 5 to Dave's 4.

Ben has been clamoring to play Cash & Guns since we taught it to him over the summer. Plus, this game is on Marshall's "want to play" list. So, out came the game of gun-pointing and loot-dividing! I was the only gangster killed outright (curses!) and Ben ended up with nary a scratch. Final division of the loot was Ben ($135k), Rick ($110k), Carol ($90k), Marshall ($70k), and Bob DOA.

While we shot each other, Dave Fair, Jason and Raphael played the great deduction game Code 777. During the game, all three players made one wrong guess. Unfortunately for them, Dave and Raphael made theirs really late in the game, thus thwarting their own victory and allowing Jason the time to guess his third combination correctly. Final scores were Jason (3), Dave (2), Raphael (2).


Finally, lots and lots of Tichu was played. I have records of the following scores:
- Noreen & Bill Trac 1070, Ruben & Melinda 930
- Kevin & Noreen 1000, Rachel & Rose 715

Thanks to everyone for joining us.