Session Summary – 16 April 2008

Five of us this week with Steve and Paul down from Telford. First game was Vinci.
After a short explanation because Paul hadn't played before, I started with Mountaineering/Rebirth. Steve H I recall had barbarians/messages one of those armies with loads of men which he likes so much, Paul also had mountaineering, I think with Field General.
This wasn't one of the most exciting games of Vinci that we'd ever played, I started by moving down the mountains in the North east corner, fearing that Paul would come on in the same place and do me severe damage with his general, but he actually started down in the opposite corner. All was pretty close in the early stages. I scored steadily until someone chopped my empire in two, at which point I removed the half that was sitting in the mountains spreading the tokens over lower ground where they would continue to score and declined at the end of the turn using rebirth.
Waiting to be picked was specialised mining, which would score 4 points for every pick axe, the mining would not continue after decline, so I had 11 units. For the rest of the game, it seemed that everyone was telling everyone else how they needed to attack me, but apart from token attempts from Paul and Mike nobody did. I spent time telling people that they did not need to attack me as I was sure to have to decline before the end at which point my large scores would evaporate. This would of course have been true in the face of a concerted attack, but that didn't materialise and the final score looks very one sided.

Vinci 100 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	107
Steve Pe	2	89
Mike	3	86
Steve H	4	82
Paul	5	74

We finished up with a game of Nottingham, the first time I had played outside of Midcon, where I have played the last 2 years. I thought that I was doing pretty well having grabbed 2 of the big assignments, but Steve had been going along steadily gathering in a good number of commodity sets and finished ahead.

Nottingham 40 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve Pe	1	71
Dave D	2	67
Steve H	3	61
Mike	4	55
Paul	5	49

That's a somewhat shorter report than many; I wasn't particularly inspired to write a lot. The next meeting has already come and gone, report to follow soon, including my thoughts on Hamburgum.