May 15th Session Report

It was a fantastic night for gaming in Derby Line on Saturday. The damp and dismal weather outside did nothing to diminish the carnival of fun in the village hall.

We will start off by sending our greetings to the three newest folk to join us for Border Board games Josh, Ken and Shannon. Glad to have you aboard and we hope y'all return for future events.

We'd also like to thank our recurring guests, Eric and Jessica and Kim and Homer. We missed having Rob and Angela especially since we may have found some new bold adventurers for next weekend's D&D 3.5 session!

The night started with a couple of split sessions of Dominion. Beth, Kim and Homer sat at the veterans table while I introduced Ken, Josh and Shannon to the game at another. In a strange twist of fate, in spite of combining the base set and Intrigue, NONE of the 20 cards selected by the randomizing program selected ANY attack cards.

Over at the veterans table Homer emerged victorious in spite of being denied his favorite Intrigue card - the swindler. The lack of attack cards apparently didn't hurt as he won by a double digit margin. At the newcomer's table strategies quickly developed and went into play. The Chapel languished unused as it lost functionality in the Curse-less deck. Ken came into some serious good fortune drawing four coppers and a Coppersmith and converting the lot into a province on no less than three occasions. Though the rest of us struggled to catch up with combinations of Harems, Great Halls and Barons, Ken's early lead carried him to ultimate victory with an impressive score of 58.

The arrival of Eric and Jessica spurred a new round of gaming. Homer, Josh, Kim, Shannon and I launched into a game of Age of Empires III. Kim, Homer and I were familiar with the board game but it was an entirely new experience for both Josh and Shannon. Several strategies emerged in the early going with Homer working the exploration angle, Kim advancing with colonization and myself pursuing a Big Money strategy. Unfortunately my gamble failed, owing in large part to sorrowful neglect of first age colonization scoring. Kim pulled away with the combination of Monastery and Cathedral as her protestant Dutch swamped the New World.

Beth led the second table through three rounds of entry-level Pandemic. That table featured Eric, Jessica, Ken and Beth struggling to end SARS, AIDS, Swine-Flu and whatever that disease is that kids bring home from school. The world came to a sad end in the first two attempts. Infector cards arrived with alarming frequency quickly rendering the bold CDC team impotent. In the final game the team triumphed against the cooties. Teamwork between Jessica the Scientist and Ken the Researcher enabled the team to develop vaccines to wipe out the Blue Plague and the Yellow Scourge.

Given that Pandemic plays more quickly than AoE III the four moved on to a game of Trans America. In spite of a shaky start that saw her train slip well down the track early in the game, Jessica emerged triumphant in the game. Eric certainly suffered from hard-luck drawing cities as geographically diverse as the game permits. Indeed, no sooner had I voiced the dismay I have experienced at combining Duluth, Jacksonville and Seattle than those three very same cards erupted in his hand. His pandemic heroics aside, Ken's train was the first to slide off the rails to land unceremoniously into the Pacific Ocean.

Which begs the question, what wonders shall we break out on the next Border board games game day, June 12th? There has been interest expressed in returning to Galactic exploration with Space Alert as well as utility management in Power Grid. Ticket to Ride with the 1910 expansion as well as Last Night On Earth are also tentatively on the gaming menu. Would anyone be up for a little monsters, madness and mayhem in Arkham Horror, it being one of the longer games in our collection? Drop us a line if there is something you want to play whether it's from our collection or yours.