Attendees: John Boyle, Dan Carey, Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Richard Heller, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Melissa Laface, Ian Rojas, Lane Taylor, and Alex Wright,

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) While waiting for morning stragglers, Michael F and Lane started with a quick game of Battle Line. Michael came to the edge of victory, having the card in his hand that would prove lane couldn’t beat a meld that would have given him his third adjacent flag for a breakthrough, but he didn’t have any remaining flags to play it on, and even if he could, Lane completed a meld on the next turn to give him five flags for an envelopment and the win.

2) John, Chris, Michael F, Joe, Ian, and Lane played A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. The game started with Michael’s House Stark and John’s House Greyjoy allying themselves in the north and a much looser alliance of Chris’s House Martell, Ian’s House Tyrell, Joe’s House Lannister, and Lane’s House Baratheon against them. The southern alliance got off to a shaky start when Martel took one of Baratheon’s strongholds (supposedly so Chris could show the rest of us who hadn’t played before how combat worked) but most of the conflict was between Greyjoy and Lannister as fleets battled for the west coast of Westeros. By mid game most players had acquired three of the seven necessary fortresses with Michael and Chris each having four and being well placed to expand, when Chris suddenly exploded into Ian’s territory taking all three remaining Tyrell fortresses in one turn and winning the game.

3) Dan and Michael K played the club’s new copy of Outpost. It was a learning game for both as they had never played it before. In the first era the game was fairly close as both players had the same number of victory points. Both built more water and ore factories, though Michael bought during the auction key items of technology that would help him down the road. In the second era Michael began to pull away, with his titanium factories and larger hand size. Dan was later able to buy robots, a laboratory and a new chemical factory to stay in the game, but could not close the gap. In the third era Michael’s resource advantages were simply too much for Dan to overcome. Michael was able to buy the very expensive moonbase which enabled him to reach 75 points to end the game. He won the game with the most points. Overall it was a fun game despite a few bumps along the way as both players learned the rules and how to apply them.

4) Chris, Michael F, Ian, Lane, and Alex played a half game of Shogun, deciding to stop after the first scoring round and not continue on to the second year as we wouldn’t have had enough time to finish it. Winter was a brutal -7 food, causing everyone to suffer varying degrees of shortages and revolts. Alex lost one province to revolt, but Michael was extremely unlucky, not only losing both of his revolting provinces (by the barest possible of margins) but also having them be strategically critical ones whose loss cost him 9 points that would have given him a comfortable victory. In the end, Chris was victorious with 22 points, followed by Ian and Lane, and then Michael and Alex beat back to 17.

5) Richard and Melissa’s timing was off from everyone else’s games, so played a two player game of Uwe Rosenberg’s new game Ora et Labora, unfortunately running out of time to finish it before the rec center closed.

6) Chris, Michael F, Ian, and Lane finished up with a game of Bohnanza, given the luck of the cards, Michael ended up concentrating on planting numerous low value beans, which in turn led to receive lots of free cards as the other players tried to get them out of their hands, and a comfortable victory with 29 points.