End of year catch up 26 November – 17 December 2008

Happy New Year to you all. Tomorrow is the first meeting of 2009, so to get things up to date, this is very belated catchup to round out the year, no great details.
26 November
7 this week, Steve Hilton, Steve Perkins, Andy & I, played Pillars of the Earth. Steve H had a good win and I think he is probably the best player of this among us. It was Andy's first game and although he wasn't able to match either of the Steves I think he got the hang of it and he managed to beat me. For some reason I seem to be able to screw up the opening far too often, I know what to do but for some reason don't.

Pillars of the Earth, The 120 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	54
Steve Pe	2	51
Andy	3	47
Dave D	4	45

On the other table Dave C, Ben & Mike played After the Flood, the new game by Martin Wallace designed for exactly that number. This was not finished in the session so goes down as a tie.

After the Flood 140 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1=
Ben	1=
Mike	1=

3 December
4 of us and first up was Mykerinos. My first play and I can't say I was very enthused about it, although I can't now recall enough to say why. It just came across as bland, I would not say I would never play again, but there are a lot of games I would play in preference.

Mykerinos 70 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mike	1	48
Steve H	2	43
Julian	3	35
Dave D	4	33

Next up was San Juan, which amazingly is the first and only play at the club in 2008. A close game with Julian just edging it over Mike, I had one of those games where the 6 buildings didn't want to show themselves. A City Hall would have made all the difference.

San Juan 35 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Julian	1	38
Mike	2	37
Dave D	3	30
Steve H	4	28

We rounded off the evening with 2 games at Tsuro, where I continued my poor form.

Tsuro 10 mins
Player	Posn.
Mike	1
Steve H	2
Julian	3
Dave D	4
Tsuro 10 mins
Player	Posn.
Steve H	1
Mike	2
Julian	3
Dave D	4

10 December
Steve H was off for the rest of the year, about the head off to the States, so there were 4 of us. We introduced Mike to Pandemic and in our first game we seemed to be doing remarkably well, too well as it happened as it eventually dawned on me that there was only one epidemic in the deck and that was in the bottom quarter of it. We abandoned the game at that point and started again.
The second game was a close fought affair, but despite only playing with 4 epidemics, we eventually lost due to the number of outbreaks, the world was doomed. Still a good time was had by all.

Pandemic 30 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1=
Dave D	1=
Ben	1=
Mike	1=
Pandemic 30 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1=
Dave D	1=
Mike	1=
Ben	1=

We then introduced Dave & Ben to Dominion. Mike & I had learned the game at Midcon and earlier in the week I had gone of Christmas Shopping and ended up spending more on me than on others (Pandemic & Dominion). Again everyone enjoyed the game and it was my first win of the month. The game went on a bit longer than normal, but that should be reduced with further play. I played again with Dave & Jenny just before Christmas and she liked it so much Dave got a copy for Christmas. I think this could get a lot of play in the future.

Dominion 40 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	37
Mike	2	30
Ben	3	22
Dave C	4	17

17 December
First up was Great Fire, a prototype by Richard Denning, which Mike & Dave had a chance to try at Midcon and I mentioned in the Midcon reports by Dave & myself. The theme is the Great Fire of London in 1666 and you are a Land owner trying to save property from burning down (more specifically your own property, you're usually not worried about other peoples'). I think the game went down well, although there were a few issues which I've passed back to Richard. If anyone else has any comments mail them to me and I'll pass them on or you can send them to Richard (rDenning on the geek). I snapped a picture of the end position.

Great Fire 80 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave C	1	41
Dave D	2	40
Mike	3	39
Ben	4	33
Andy	5	31

After that Dave & Ben went and the rest of us played Pandemic. I was the Scientist, Mike the Operations expert and Andy the Dispatcher. Unfortunately we failed again, although we came close and would have won had we got round to my turn as I had the cards to cure the last disease. It was not to be as the final outbreak happened.

Pandemic 35 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave D	1=
Mike	1=
Andy	1=

See you tomorrow.