Germantown 09/29/08

Attendance:

• Leslie Barkley
• Aubrey Bell
• David Briggs
• Martha Briggs
• Todd Heidenreich
• Doug Hoylman
• Ben Jones
• Bob Jones
• Eric Reinhold

The BGG entry for tonight's session is here.

First up, the clever and transparent card game, Gloom, where parts of the cards are literally transparent. Players try to inflict misery on their poor pathetic characters before their inevitable death. This night, Dave Briggs was by far the most miserable with a downright forlorn winning score of -50. Dave was followed by Eric -25, and Doug -20. Leslie brought up the rear with a merely relatively depressed score of -10.

When I arrived, Aubrey was waiting, so I taught him the wonderfully balanced two player game by Reiner Knizia, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Aubrey was the Dark Lord Sauron and his minions while I captained the Fellowship of the Ring. The early game was a bloodbath with multiple characters on each side getting killed, a strategy that usually leads to a Dark Player victory. Unfortunately for Aubrey, his inexperience led him to leave an opening for Frodo to slip past his forces and zip straight to Mordor for the win. I doubt Aubrey will make such a mistake a second time.

The enormously successful Settlers of Catan started the whole Euro game trend back in the early nineties. It’s been quite a while since I played so I was eager to bring it to the table with Doug, Dave B and Martha. What followed was a tight, very close game. Dave was cut off and had difficulty finding spaces to build, although he did manage a sizable road for the Longest Road bonus. About halfway through the game I found myself with lots of sheep, grain and ore so I started acquiring development cards to get the Largest Army card and its two victory points.

Alas, on my penultimate turn, I forgot to play one of the two Knight cards remaining in my hand. Had I done so, I would have gotten the 2 point bonus on the next turn and won the game ahead of Doug. Since I didn’t, he won by building up to 10 Victory Points, leaving the rest of us with 8 points each. A harsh lesson in paying attention.

Thurn & Taxis is another recent Euro that, like Ticket to Ride, plays quickly and is easy to learn but also requires a decent amount of strategy and is just plain fun. In this game, Aubrey proved the most adept at setting up post offices throughout Europe with 19 points to Eric’s 17, Leslie’s 14 and Todd’s 8.

What a shock! We played Race for the Galaxy again! Todd won with a huge shipping score. Final scores (cards, shipping, bonus) were Todd 21+28+0=49, Aubrey 13+4+24=41, Eric 9+20+4=33, and Leslie 21+2+6=29.

Finally, with three of us left, Ben joined us for four hands of Poison. After two rounds, Doug had a good lead. Unfortunately, a bad third round did him in. Dave and Ben were pretty much out by the second round. Bob 6+0+4+2=12, Doug 2+0+11+4=17, Dave 11+8+4+7=30, and Ben 4+15+4+8=30.