Attendees: Chad Willard, Lane Taylor, KC Deitrick, John Boyle, Alex Jordan, Kelly and Zachary Burnaby, Jeff, Jason, and Josh Bowen and their friend Raymond.
Club Business: None
Games Played:
1) Chad, Lane, KC, and John kicked off the day with a (mostly learning) game of the card game, Innovation. It was the first game for Chad, Lane, and John. Chad took a solid mid-game lead utilizing the strategic combo of Education and Perspective. However, once John took the lead in factories late-game he was able to amass a score of over 40, allowing a double achieve action to win with 5 victory points (only 4 were needed).
Lane had a solid Tech lead throughout the game, but wasn’t able to convert the advantage into victory points. KC (as the resident innovation expert) said this was a common frustration.
Overall, the game progressed slowly, but that’s to be considered when 3/4 of the players were new. I hope to play more of it in the future.
2) KC, Lane, and Chad fired up High Frontier.
Notes from KC:
Lane, Chad, and I played a session of High Frontier. Lane was NASA, Chad was Shimzu, and I was UN. We played full game with no head start.
After several rounds of auctioning and collecting rocket parts, all 3 of us launched rockets around the same time. I headed for Deimos, Chad to Ceres, and Lane to the Moon.
Lane claimed the moon, and eventually established an ET factory there and started producing some “S” product black cards, but had problems getting them into use (see below). Chad claimed Ceres, and a nearby asteroid, he eventually established an ET factory and colony on the asteroid. KC after unsuccessfully prospecting at Deimos, refueled and spent the rest of the game hopping around the asteroid belt prospecting about 4 M class objects, but all of them failed. We quit after about 3hrs play, with Chad at 12VP, Lane at 10VP, KC 0VP.
3,4) Next, John and Alex pulled out 7 Wonders since they both really enjoyed it at the last meeting and wanted to play again.
Kelly and Zachary arrived just prior to the 7 wonders game and after a hasty explanation of the rules, jumped in for some 4 player action.
Zachary maxed out (I think) the Gear Science cards (5 of them) leading him to a clear victory of 54 points. John, Kelly, and Alex, scored 39, 35, 34 respectively.
In the re-match, Alex won with 50 points, followed by John with 46, with Kelly and Zachary tied at 40.
5) The Quad then played Pirate’s Cove. Kelly took an early lead and didn’t look back, winning with 33 points. Zachary, Alex, and John scored 29, 26, and 24 respectively.
6) Meanwhile, Jeff and Jason arrived and played an incomplete game of Battlelore.
7) Josh and Raymond showed up afterwards and fired up a game of Arkham Horror and played several turns. After the Pirate’s Cove game above ended, they reset the game and started a new one with Josh, Jason, Raymond, and Zachary (with John staying a bit later than usual in an advisory role). The investigators were up against Yig and appeared to be holding their own (at least until 3:30 when John had to leave).
8) Chad, Alex, and Kelly pulled out Pandemic , which ended in tragic defeat. Only the yellow disease needed cured and Chad had the cure. It was, however, Alex’s turn. Fortunately, Alex played the Forecast card and rearranged the Infection deck to place Lima and Jakarta on the bottom. Those locations already had 3 cubes each and the team only had one outbreak left. Alex’s turn ended safely, but Kelly was faced with an impossible situation. He needed to clear a cube from both Lima and Jakarta, but just couldn’t make it work.
The trio played another game, but the results of that game are unknown.
Thanks to John and KC for the notes.