Germantown 09/15/08

This night was rather quiet with much of the Borders Cafe to ourselves. Which is just how we like it!

Attending:

• Leslie Barkley
• Aubrey Bell
• David and Martha Briggs
• Dave Fair
• Todd Heidenreich
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob Jones
• Eric & Laura Reinhold

While I’m not overly fond of the game bits, Uptown is a fun tile placement game with some cutthroat elements. Dave’s notes indicate that this game was particularly brutal, with everyone starting out near the center of the board. Final scores were 2 Laura (7), 2 Doug (10), 2 Dave F (16), 4 David B (10), and 4 Eric (12).

I haven’t played the tactical trading game, Hansa, in quite a while, so I brought it out. Eric, Laura and Martha joined me in the Hanseatic League, shipping goods in northern Europe. Everyone did a good job of spreading their market booths into multiple cities. Fewer did well at converting barrels to victory points. Martha did a great job, sometimes gaining eight or more points in a single turn and walking to victory. Scores (barrel points + city points) were Martha 46+12 = 58, Bob 35+12 = 47, Eric 24+16 = 40, and Laura 26+10 = 36.

The new Alea (medium box) game, Witch's Brew, is out and I didn’t know it! Dave did know it was out (having bought it) and so they read the rules and played. The reaction wasn’t stellar, but I’m looking forward to playing it. Dave F 21 (17+4), Doug 19 (14+5), Leslie 17 (17+0), Aubrey 16 (12+4).

While we finished Hansa, the other group broke out an old favorite, Verflixxt, an excellent roll and move filler. Leslie had a bunch of negative points but managed to get a couple of “lucky dogs” to make them positive. Todd and Aubrey weren’t so lucky. Final scores were Doug 14, Dave F 11, Leslie 6, David B 6, Aubrey -3, and Todd -12.

With nine of us left, we broke into two groups. Dave F learned that Todd hadn’t yet played Dominion, so they immediately rectified that along with Eric and Doug. They played two games with Eric winning the first and Dave winning the second. Scores were Eric 27, Dave 23, Doug 21, and Todd 15. Then Dave 27, Todd 25, Eric 15 and Doug 10 (ouch!).

Maenwhile, I brought out one of the “Blue Games”, Dragon’s Gold. The Blue Games are a series of small but fun games that all come in a blue box. (The most played Blue Game in our group is Democrazy). In Dragon’s Gold, players deploy a team of adventurers attempting to kill dragons and steal their treasure. Killing the dragon is the easy part; afterwards, the players who contributed to killing the dragon have one minute to divide the treasure. Failure means forfeiture of the entire treasure. In this case, Aubrey was by far the best as he trounced us. Aubrey 51, David B 41, Leslie 36, Martha 34, and Bob 34.

For more commentary, follow this link to Dave's summary of this session on BGG.