Germantown 01/19/09

On the eve of a new President, we gathered to play games.

Attendance:

• Aubrey & Shannon Bell
• Leslie Barkley
• Dave, Andrew & Corwin Fair
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob & Ben Jones
• Nathaniel Klinger
• Rick & Linda Pasquale

First up, the new Sushi tiles game, Sushizock im Gockelwok. A cousin to Pickomino, this variant plays more quickly and is a little more forgiving. Ben showed his love of sushi by beating the rest of us. Ben 6, Andrew 5, Bob 4, Dave 3, Doug -4.

Next up, a quick, fun word game that's easier than Scrabble and plays in about 10 minutes, Bananagrams. We were very wary of going against word-game-master Doug, but everyone did surprisingly well. Doug was the first to use all his letters and signified so by saying "Peel", triggering everyone to draw a new letter tile. He then did the same another half dozen times. Dave got in on the act and then Leslie. Once there were only three tiles left in the center, however, the next player to use all their letters would be the winner. In this case, Bob shouted out "Bananas!" first, but, alas, "Peet" isn't a word, thus disqualifying Bob. At the time, Dave had 1 tile left, and Leslie and Doug had 4 tiles each.

Meanwhile, the boys played Cheeky Monkey with Andrew outscoring Ben and Corwin, 48 to 30 to 12, respectively.

Afterwards, Ben, Corwin and Andrew took on worldwide epidemics in Pandemic. Alas, the diseases won.

Next, Dave, Doug, Leslie and Bob took on ghosts attacking a small Chinese village in the cooperative game, Ghost Stories. Despite some close calls, an easy master ghost was quickly wailed upon and the good guys beat the ghosts to win the game! Total number of ghosts banished by the players were Bob 14, Leslie 10, Dave 9 and Doug 8.

When Rick and Linda arrived, they joined Aubrey and Shannon for the fun race game, Power Boats. It seems that every time we play this game, someone gets creamed. This time, it was Shannon's turn. Her son, Aubrey, however crushed everyone. Scores were Aubrey 18, Rick 8, Linda 8, and Shannon 3.

After Ghost Stories, we played a quick game of Worm Up where players play their number cards simultaneously. If your number is unique, move your worm forward that many segments. If not, you don't move. Bob won this fairly easily. Also playing were Nathaniel, Leslie, Dave, and Doug.

Since we had nine and we were on the verge of a new President, I brought out the always fun voting game, Democrazy. Shannon made up for her Power Boats performance by a big victory here. What's really interesting is that scores ranged from 4 to 13 (sans 12) with no number repeated. Scores were Shannon 13, Rick 11, Linda 10, Dave 9, Leslie 8, Bob 7, Aubrey 6,Doug 5, Nathaniel 4.

The boys played two more games of Cheeky Monkey. They didn't record the scores for the first game, but the second game ended Ben 42, Corwin 30 and Andrew 23.

We then broke into two groups for the last games of the evening. I wanted to play Lost Cities Board Game which is a four player version of Knizia's excellent Lost Cities. Shannon walked away with the victory after two rounds of play. Shannon 235, Aubrey 205, Bob 200, Nathaniel 150.

Finally, Dave taught the very alliterative Fast Flowing Forest Fellers. From first to last were Rick, Dave, Leslie, Doug and Linda.

That's a lot of games for a single night!