Tonight we played Ticket to Ride: USA 1910.

• Game 1 (The Mega Game), Dave won, followed by Sallie, John, and Craig.
• Game 2 (The Mega Game), Dave won, followed by Sallie, John, and Craig.

The first game had Dave and Sallie only a point apart, and John and Craig only a point apart (with about 30 points between the two groups).  The second game had a much wider point spread, with no bunching.

Attendees:  Craig Trader and Carrie Hafer, Sallie and Dave Montuori, and John McMahon.

Tonight we played On The Underground and Castle Merchants.

• Dave kicked ass in On The Underground easily beating Craig, John, and Tony.
• Craig won Castle Merchants, followed by John and Dave.

Attendees: Craig Trader and Carrie Hafer, Sallie, Dave and Tony Montuori, Dana Leader, and John McMahon.

There was a nice article in the Baltimore Sun last week; I happened across the AP version and thought I'd mention it. It's about a Maryland gamer, John Goon, who's setting up gaming clubs in the region.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight we played Castle Merchants.

• Craig, Blaise, and Rachel played the 3-player variant, with Carrie sub'ing for Rachel, and Dave sub'ing for Blaise.  Rachel/Carrie won.
• Craig, Dave, Sallie, and Carrie played the 4-player variant, with Carrie winning.

Attendees: Craig Trader and Carrie Hafer, Rachel and Jim "Blaise" Trigg, and Sallie and Dave Montuori.

Enlightenment XI

March 28–30, 2008, Days Hotel, Timonium, MD

Age of Renaissance and Manifest Destiny

The Boardgame Players' Association is pleased to announce the 11th annual meeting of its Age of Renaissance mini-con gaming conference. Coming off its smallest attendance ever in 2007, Enlightenment will go to a new format in its effort to draw a minimum of 25 players or host its farewell performance in 2008. Manifest Destiny will join the program as two four-round events are held in three full days of gaming. Only one of the eight rounds will conflict on Friday evening—giving players a choice as to which event they want to play the extra round. Note that it will be possible, but more difficult, to win both events since each tournament allows players to drop one of four scores.
Manifest Destiny play will begin promptly at 9 AM Friday with rounds at 2 and 7 PM later in the day. The fourth and final round will be Saturday at 2:30 PM.

The Age of Renaissance action begins Friday night at 7 PM and continues with two more rounds on Saturday at 9 AM and 6:30 PM. A fourth round will be played Sunday morning. The winner for the weekend will be that player with the highest total for any three of the four rounds.

Only the Friday 7 PM slot conflicts and forces players to make a choice which of the two events they'll play for all four rounds.

Enlightenment uses a unique scoring system that keeps most players in contention for a prize throughout the weekend rather than being eliminated by a poor showing or relegated to the "losers' table". Every player scores points as a percentage of the winner's score. This provides a real incentive to play against the leader to prevent run-away victories. In subsequent rounds, players are grouped according to their finish in the previous game ... with all Round 1 winners paired in Round 2, all second-place players together, and so on. The winners compete with each other—earning a bonus point for each other table's winner in that round they best by posting a wider margin of victory. Slow play is discouraged by penalizing all scores in games that take more than five hours. This scoring mechanism has resulted in nearly all Renaissance games finishing in under five hours, with some ending in less than four.

Tonight we played Gloom with both expansions, TransEuropa, and Dead Money.

• Craig won Gloom, beating John, Jim, Justin, and Dana.
• Tony, Ty, and Sallie played TransEuropa.
• John won Dead Money, beating Dave, Jim, and Craig.

Attendees: Craig Trader and Carrie Hafer, Rachel and Jim "Blaise" Trigg, Sallie, Dave and Tony Montuori, Dana Leader, Justin Clapp, Ty Umeno, and John McMahon.

We spontaneously decided to have friends over for dinner (french bread, beef and noodles, turkey and noodles, chocolate cake) and ended up playing Power Grid:

• Germany: Dave kicked ass on Craig, John, Tony and Dana.
• Italy: Craig narrowly beat John.

Attendees: Craig Trader and Carrie Hafer, Sallie, Dave and Tony Montuori, Dana Leader, and John McMahon.