Attendees: Shane Andrews, John Boyle, Ben Blankley, Greg Chandra, Michael Feinberg, Ryan Frans, Jim Halloran, Richard Heller, Paul Hsu, Michael Kelly, Melissa Laface, and Lane Taylor

Club Business: 2013 officers were elected and we voted to purchase Lords of Waterdeep and The New Science.

Games Played:
1) Shane, John, Michael F, and Paul started with a game of Puerto Rico. Michael was the only one who had played before, giving him a significant advantage, but everyone else seemed to pick up the mechanics and some strategy fairly quickly. Michael turned an early coffee monopoly combined with both the large and small markets into a money making machine, allowing him to build three of the 4 point large buildings. Michael won with 44 points, largely from buildings, but Shane wasn’t far behind with 38 points from an impressive shipping operation.

2) Jim, Michael K, and Lane considered playing Flat Top, but after being looking at the time commitment and complexity decided to switch to Shogun. They only played one year, which was characterized by the peasants being much stronger than expected and an extremely close result – Michael 22, Lane 21, and Jim 20.

3) Melissa taught Shane and Paul Ora et Labora where she won with a comfortable lead.

4) John, Michael F, Ryan, and Richard played a close fought game of Eclipse. The game had very little early combat, with Richard as the Planta and John as the Descendants of Draco both significantly expanding and leaving Ryan’s Mechanema and particularly Michael’s Hydran Progress mostly isolated. Ryan was able to take over the galactic center and start an arms race with Richard (as well as breaking his treaty with John and conquering one of his systems), but Michael was left to concentrate on technology and hope that point-scoring monoliths would become available. They finally did on the last turn, but Michael built them one action too early, committing all of his production, which had been serving as a check against Ryan’s aggression since it could have rapidly been turned into a fleet of technologically advanced ships. Once that threat was gone, Ryan turned his fleet against Michael instead of Richard and conquered all but one of his systems, knocking Michael down to only 19 points at the end of the game. The game ended with a bang, when Richard sent in a pair of cruisers each armed with 3 plasma missiles against a large fleet of Ryan’s and lucky rolling caused him to hit on 10 of his 12 dice – one more than the nine needed to wipe him out. Unfortunately Richard didn’t have neutron bombs, so couldn’t conquer the system and transfer its points from Ryan to him. That left Ryan winning the game with 42 points to Richard’s 38.

5) Jim and Michael K spent the afternoon with Twilight Struggle, where Michael’s communists prevailed in the 10th round.

6) Ben and Greg taught themselves the Rivals for Catan card game. Once they figured out what they were doing, they enjoyed themselves with Ben winning.

7) Ben, Greg, Michael F, Richard, and Melissa finished up with 7 Wonders with both the Leaders and Cities expansions. Richard amassed an impressive 55 points in science, but his 65 total points weren’t enough to catch up with Melissa, who took good advantage of the expansions to earn 26 points from white and black cards. Combined with a generally diversified strategy otherwise, she net 68 points for the win. Michael edged out Richard for second place, also with 65 points, mostly from guilds and blue cards and with more leftover money for the tiebreaker.