John's:
What a way to start the new year. After having just finished the year with a 6 player Catan game, John and family wanted to play Silverton. Crazy but who am I to say no to a long game after midnight. It was 1:00 AM by the time we started. Penii and I started in Denver, James had SLC and John was in El Paso. The mine distribution favored El Paso and SLC. Luckily Penii and I went in two different directions. I headed for Leadville and Aspen while she head south towards Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Penii lost one of her prospectors during the first turn. It would not be the last, at least four more prospectors bit the big one with Penii getting most of the bad luck. John was dominating the game as most of the mine cards were located in the south. James was making bucks with his passenger lines and Penii was making money with the few coal mines that she had. I had gold and silver but prices were mostly on the low side, so I only sold when I needed money. By the end of the second year, John had a depletion streak that allowed the rest of us to catchup. At the end of the tenth turn, John was 30 bucks from victory while I was at least 400 and Penni was a good 1000 behind. Price for Coal and Gold spiked on the next turn. A few lucky mining rolls and the game was mine. Game ended around 3:30 AM,
Me (9245), John (7670), Penii (7550), James (2705)

John's:
John called around 11 AM to see if I was ready to play more games. Since I had just woken up, I told him that I need an hour for a full wake up. I brewed my coffee, ate some toast followed by new exercise routine, shoveling snow. Got to John's house hoping to play a game of Puerto Rico with the expansion but Johnny and Penii were not too keen on that. We finally settled on Ticket to Ride with the Mystery Train expansion. Shuffled in the expansion cards after handing out the initial tickets. After the cut the top ticket was one of the specials. It didn't take long before someone jumped on it. I found that the expansion increase the incentive of grabbing more tickets during the game rather the end of the game "desperation" draw. I did draw extra tickets midway through the game and I drew the Engineer (pick a ticket from the draw pile) and an inspector (double a ticket's value if it is 10 or less). I spent my last three turn building short tracks to end the game. During scoring I found that I had forgotten to hook up Santa Fe and Portland. To make things worse, I was next to them, argggh! The mistake turned out to be a 44 point swing. This is the second time that I've made that kind of whiff, I hope it's not early signs of Alzhiemers.
Penii (125), Me (90), John (65), Johnny (38)

John's:
The day before I had pushed Eurorails on John, Penii and Johnny. After two hours of playing we decided to call the game since it didn't look like we were closing to finishing and people were a little frustrated. After the Ticket to Ride game I jokingly said "How about Eurorails", expecting a chorus of NOs. Instead I heard a chorus of Yeah!!! To speed up the game we used the fast rule variant, more money and faster trains. We still played for three hours. I had a good lead but was hammered by two consecutive bad events. During that time the other players were able to make good progress. John won the game by make two very profitable orange sales in central Europe.
John (276), Johnny (129), Me (127), Penii (74)

John's:
Three days of snow shoveling and games were starting to have an effect because during the rules explanation, I noticed that both John and Penii were starting to look sleepy. I was willing to pass on the game but they wanted to push on. First round, everybody rolled their four ? dice and acquired a company, except for John who got two companies. Railroad and station building commenced during the next three turns. During the four year, James took control of John's company to increase his income to five but the bank ran out and the game was over. It felt like we played wrong, cause it ended way too fast. Later, I read some session reports and reread the rules and it turns out that I messed up a couple of the rules. I didn't give the bonus dice for tile placement and station building. I'm thinking this game needs more dice for 4 players. Maybe it'll work with three. Got to try it again. Technically the game ended in a tie since not all companies had a station on the board.
John (9), Me (7), James (5), Penii (4)

BGoR: The snow made today's turn out a little lite. Nate and Bruce wanted to try the new carc, which was good since I wanted to try a new strategy. During my five previous plays I used my standard strategy of sharing. I realized during my last play that it was too easy to shut out interlopers. I concentrated on build my own markets and roads. I also jumped on a couple walls and residential area. Well it worked and I had won my first game of the City.
Me (135), Bruce (116), Nate (110)

BGoR: Only five of our regulars showed up but this week we picked up three players, Lisa, Cody and Jake. Cody and Jake had discovered Euro boardgaming recently while Lisa was into Scrabble and Monopoly. Lisa was darning enough to join us in our games. She played and won Basari.
Unlike Carcassonne the City, I've never had to formulate a strategy for St Peterburg, it was hardwired in my head. Like I told someone once, I just buy the best card at the time. Lisa had trouble grasping some of the concepts of the game so I would give her advise on things to consider. She made a mistake and took a very large building (5 vp) during the first turn. It scored her good points early but she was cash poor for most of the game. I on the other hand went for builders, a small building and money generating aristocrats. By the final turns I was cranking out the cash, 30+ during the builder phase, 25+ the aristocrat phase and 22 vp during the buildings phase.
Me (88), Bruce (81), Jared (69), Lisa (60)

BGoR: Joe and Nate wanted to play Carcassonne again. I told Joe the secret and he didn't believe me. He tried to break into my market and I blocked him. He tried again and once again I shut him out. He gave up after that and started working on his own markets. I scored a couple of long roads and one of my guards scored 17 points. I won again.
Me (141), Nate (120), Joe (114)

Jared's: Jared gave me a buzz during lunch, his cousin was in town and he was looking to play some games. I head to his house after work and I brought along my latest acquisition, Formula Motor Racing. The game is pretty simple. Twelve plastic cars, 6 colors two cars each, are lined up for the start of the race. A player plays a card and then draws a card from the draw pile. Play continues until the draw deck is exhausted. Some cards are color specific while some are generic. Most cards allow a car to advance position while others may cause accidents. The game play is quick. Jared had pole position but soon lost it by other players attack cards. The game came down to the final turn as he made a risky maneuver to get victory.
Jason (13), Me (6), Jared (0)

Jared's: Jared wanted to give St Petersburg another try. Went through another rules explanation for Mike and Jason. While I went over the rules, I stressed that cash was king, so they wouldn't be hosed like Lisa had been a few days ago. Mike took the advice to heart and grabbed anything that generated cash. Midway thru the game, Mike and Jared were cranking out more than I. I was starting to think that my undefeated run was about to end. Even though they were generating lots of cash they waited a little too long to switch over to VP generating items. My extra turn of VP helped me grab my fourth victory in this game.
Me (101) , Jared (86), Jason (74), Mike (56)

Jared's: I saw that Jared had Tyros in his collection, so I suggested it as our next play. Jared agreed and we started by going over the rules. Tyros had been on my list of games to play since I had seen it played at B20 many years ago but somehow I never got around to play it. The board is a map of the Mediterranean divided by a 5 x 8 grid. To start, Four empires are placed on the map and each player places two ships on Tyre. Each player also gets 5 empire tiles.
The turn order is made of four phases.
1) Deal commerce cards.
Each player gets 10 cards (12 for three players)
2) Expand empires.
Each player starting with the start player plays an empire tile next an existing empire. If a player plays a tile next to two empires then he gets to choose which empire grows.
3) Card Actions.
At this point a player can do one of the following actions:

a) Buy a ship: Pay commerce cards equal to number of ships at building city include the new ship, at least one card must be of the color of the empire that the city is in.
b) Move a ship: Move a ship to an empire square. Cost is a card for each square traversed and they must be of the empire's color.
c) Build a city : An empty empire square containing only your ships. Five cards of empire's color and a ship must be used to build a city.
d) Trade with bank: A player can dump up to three cards and redraw the same amount or dump three cards and take any card from the discard deck.
e) Trade with players: Only one trade per turn can be done.
3) Pass: Turn is over when all players consectively pass.

Moving into a another player's city requires a payment of a card (we didn't do that).
Building a ship only requires one card of the empire's color, not all cards of that color.
Each turn players get ten commerce card, not restock to ten.
If a player can't make a successful trade, he is allowed to do something else. We played it as a lost action.
Finally, We didn't add Bonus points for the most cities in each empire.

Jared's: I told Jared that my New Years resolution was to play at least five plays of AoS. He was down with that and we decided that it would be our first game of the day. We went over the rules for Jason, he seemed to be overwhelmed by them. This game become a clinic on how to play AoS. I started out issuing lots of shares while Jared and Jason were on the conservative side. By the fourth turn, I was moving goods over four links while they were still doing one link moves. The game was pretty much over by that moment. I finished the game with 100 in the bank, an income of 44 (it was 52 before income reduction) and I only had issued 10 shares.
Me (136), Jared (94), Jason (70)

Jared's: Jason wanted to play a game that didn't require learning new rules. We settled on giving Tryos another try, this time playing with the revised rules. It was weird but the initial empire set up was almost identical to last nights game. Jason used my strategy from the previous game and headed towards the central empire. I made several trades and was able to head toward the north empire and build a city during the first turn. Jared stayed in the starting empire and built a city there. As the game progress, Jared had secured dominance in the south empire while the central empire exploded in size and blocked out the eastern empire. It became a race to build cities in the central empire which would give 12 points per city at the end of the game. I started using a blocking strategy to prevent city growth and that strategy was promptly copied. It become a race to the eastern empire for city growth, which I won and secured two cities.
Me (96), Jared (92), Jason (63)

Jared's: The snow was starting to come down, so I figured I had one more game to play. I should have gone home because it turned out to be my worst play in Carcassonne ever. I �boinked� for a two point city but then I suffered bad draws and placement which resulted in strading all of my meeples. Part of the blame was that Jared and I were trying to split a city so I used up three meeples there. I had two long roads that I couldn't seem to complete, a Monastery dependent on a very specific tile, and a farmer. I only drew non terminating road segments for my last five turns. It looked like Jason was going to win but Jared was able to get an extra farmer into the big meadow which secured his victory.
Jared (76), Jason (68), Me (22)

Home: JR and Roger came up to Reno in between storms. They were up here to take advantage of the "legendary" snowfall that the area was receiving. After dinner, JR mentioned that he was interested in giving Puerto Rico another try. Roger wanted to play Illuminati but we convinced him that Puerto Rico was a good game. I went over the rules for Roger and started with the following positions; Me, Jr and Roger. JR bought the Hacienda early and his random plantation picks were corn, making him the corn whore. Roger tried the corn whore strategy but JR picks forced him into a factory strategy. I decided that I wouldn't do factory strategy, instead I bought both markets and the office for a super trader strategy. I used the big bucks to buy two large buildings (Fortress/Guildhall) before the others could come close to buying one. I then tried to end the game asap since JR was doing a really good job of shipping. The game came to an end when I filled the twelve building areas. Roger bought the Custom House but no mayor phase afterwards.
Me (24+13+14=51), Jr (12+34+0=46), Roger (17+28+0=45) (Buildings+Shipping+Bonus)

BGoR: Mike went over the rules for Cody. During the placement phase we where shocked by cody's ability to place all of his people tokens. Later we realized that he misunderstood one of the rules and was placing way more tokens on the boards. Neither Mike nor I had caught that goof, asterisk game!!! Of course, it was bad for him since he was the obvious target when we got an omen card. During the escape phase we able to take care of Cody's people advantage by encircling a lot of his tokens. Mike and I tied for rescued people and we also ended up being tied in number of people in the volcano.
Me, Mike (11[14]), Cody (9)

BGoR: Mike broke out a new game to teach. Basically this is a set collecting game where the idea is to capture criminals (positive points) while avoiding capturing innocents (negative points). The game has a bidding round in which players release one of there characters from jail. A good way to release innocents but if you're desperate to go first you can release a criminal to get a higher turn order. Selection phase allows for some interesting planning as you have to select two color set to take from. In turn order each player must take a character from one of the color they had selected followed by another selection round this time in reverse turn order (ie First player picks first and last ala Settlers of Catan setup).
Since none of us had played this game before the game felt pretty chaotic and I had trouble figuring out what to bid and which color to take. Brad and I missed an important rule on bonus points at the end of the game. It probably would have help since you could figure what people were aiming for.
Jared (34), Mike (30), Cody (26), Brad (26), Me (24)

BGoR: Mike broke out the game that everyone was itching to play. The game is your typical dungeon crawler al la heroquest or mutant chronicles. One player plays the demons while the other players are the marines. The marines get an object of some kind while the demon player tries to kill the marines. I played for about thirty minutes before I got pulled off to play E&T.
Mike, Brad, Me, Jared

BGoR: Some people showed up and started to set up Mike's copy of E&T. Joe was going to join them in a game of E&T but didn't feel comfortable teaching. So in between turns I went over the rules. Joe disappeared so not to be rude I excused myself from the Doom game to play E&T with three newbies. During the game we chit chatted and I found out that they were from Ohio. I mentioned that I would be heading to Dayton at the end of the month only to find out that where they lived. I also found out, to my shock, that this was Nancy and Joe first exposure to german designer games. Wow what an introduction. Marc was the gamer in the group but mainly light game like Carcassonne and Catan. I was invited to join for games when I was in the area.
Me (8), Nancy (7), Joe (6), Marc (5)

Home: I sent out a special invitation to the wargamers in the group for a WotR day. I got two confirms and we settled on Sunday for the game. I spent about 45 minutes on Saturday night setting up the game. Gripe alert, most of the free people's units looked similar. I wish they would have given each nation a unique shape/color. Looks like I'll have to paint the bases to distinguish the pieces. People arrived on time and we spent 40 minutes going over the rules. Joel took control of the Free People's, Cody got the Sauron forces while I played Isengard, the Sourthron and Easterlings. Joel separated Gimili during the first turn and sent him toward Erebor to activate the Dwarves. A turn later Strider left the fellowship and headed towards Bree to activate the North. He was able to get the Dwarves in a "At war" state with an event card. A turn later the North was activated. During those turns Sauron and Isengard went to War and Saruman appeared on the board. During the fourth turn, the fellowship finally moved out of Rivendale. The war drums began when the Southron and Easterling went to War. Sauron attack Gondor and took Minas Tirith while Isengard rolled into Helm's Deep. The witch king came into play and took Pelargir while the Easterlings move into dwarven territory taking Erebor. The Fellowship started taking several moves during a turn and lost Gandalf the Grey and later Legolas. Strider made it to Dol Amroth to become Aragon where he promptly died as the Witch King sieged the stronghold. The game ended when the Easterlings took Dale. Gimili and company were no match to my four sixes in the first round of combat. The fellowship got as far as Dimrill Dale, just north of Lorien with three points of corruption.

We all liked this game and are looking forward to playing it again. This time we all agreed that the fellowship must move towards Mordor as quickly as possible. The Free People's forces are just too week to handle the Sauron armies.
Sauron Players Win via Military victory condition

BGoR: A lite night at Borders. Our first game of the night was a game I bought but haven't played yet. Cody brought his copy which was English-ized with paste ups, a very impressive job. This is a heavy auction game in which 60 tiles will be auctioned off. These tile are mix of technologies, factories, resources/money or bonus tiles. There are bunch of ways to score victory points, when the tiles are built, bonus tiles in combination with factories, connections between tiles and money at the end of the game.
Starting Order Jake, Me, Nate, Cody
Nobody really knew what to do so we just bought things. I settled on buying items on the technology side. Jake concentrated buying builds that had connections between them. I had a little luck on my side when I was the auctioneer I alway got to keep key technologies. i picked up a nice lead but I thought Jake, with a nice clump of building, was going to be the sure winner. At the end of the game his lack of bonus tiles hurt him.
Staring position Jake, Me, Nate, Cody

Me (43), Cody, Nate (37), Jake (36)

BGoR: We played a couple of games of Zirkus Flohcati while we waited for Todd's wife and a friend to arrive.
Game 1: Nate (51) Cody (45), Todd (39), Jake (38), Me (37)
Game 2: Me (48), Nate (44), Jake (43), Cody (38), Todd (19)

BGoR: Todd's wife arrive but they left to get dinner. Nate wanted to give Carc the City another try. Cody and Jake where up for learning a new game. The game was a close one, I lucked out and snagged a 17 point guard on the final wall placement. It gave me the points to edge out Nate.
Me (102), Nate (97), Cody (81), Jake (77)

BGoR: We had a new guy show up during Carc. He wanted to visit and check out the club. We offered to play a game with him but he was short on time. I had the perfect game for that. I went over the rules and offer we started. We played three hands of trendy. Josh enjoyed the game and he felt that his wife would enjoy it too. Ahh another happy customer.
Cody, Nate (84), Josh (80), Me (79), Jake (74)

BGoR: Todd and company returned from their dinner. For some odd result we settled on play the Great Dalumti. We played three hands before Cody and Jake bailed out. IMHO, this game requires alcohol and silly hats to be really fun.
Players Nate, Cody, Me, Danniel, Todd, Doug, Jake

BGoR: We had 30 minutes before the cafe closed, so Nate suggested High Society. Nate went over the rules while I grabbed a Mango smoothie. I can usually estimate what a tile will go for during the game but newbies tend to throw off the bidding towards the high side. Doug did exactly that, spending over forty to get a five and a doubler. The next tile for grabs was the thief and Doug's bid was 25 million. I hated doing it but I had to put up 26 and Todd put up 27. Danielle took the tile and that left Nate sitting pretty. After that round I knew who the winner and loser were, the places in the middle were yet to be determined.
Nate (20), Danielle (15), Todd (9), Me (8), Doug (-)

BGoR: I went over to Mike's to give Doom another try. We stayed with the original roles, Mike was the demon player while the rest of us were the marines. The game was interrupted for about 20 minutes when Mike's wife backed into Jared's car. Doh!! The marines got off to bad start when Jared entered a hall way and was sealed off from the rest of us. The zombies got him. Mike then summoned a big monster which we killed but it drain our ammo. With Jared back from the dead we clean up zombies. Me moved to the next room and took out the doggies and zombies. I was hurting and everybody's ammo was low. In the next room, Jared managed to get himself sealed off again. This time he managed to survive the round but he was eventually munched. We got by an ambush of spiders and made a made dash to the exit. The room with the exit was filled with lots of baddies. The marines won by the skin of their teeth.
Brad, Me, Jared , Mike

John's: We had a few minutes before the boys had to leave. The boys really got into game and I started thinking that I should pull out Formula De sometime in the future. Well, Johnny got the worst and lost both cars. I had the lead until John successfully played spinout on my lead car, knocking my shot at winning.
Penii (13), John (7), Me (4), James (2), Johnny (0)

John's: When I first played this game I thought John and Penii would enjoy this game. This time I made sure I played the game 100 percent correctly. Using the correct rules this game made building lots of cities tougher, making ship building important for those end game bonus. I decided not to use the blocking strategy and headed for the green empire (Greece). This turned out to be a bad move since it allowed John to secure a dominate position what would become the two largest empires. Penii didn't like the game, what a bummer.
John (97), Penii (72), Me (61)

John's: I've played at least one game of Catan per month for the last 8 years. It was looking like I could break my streak this month. Luckily for me, Penni and John are Catan addicts. It wasn't too hard for me to convince them keep my streak going. Well I got the rolls early, developing my network, getting defender of catan and getting the Yellow Metro. Sadly I couldn't seem to close out the game, allowing John to slowly catchup. He snagged the other two metros and the longest road for victory.
John (14), Me (10), Penii (7)

Home: I decided to have an impromtu game day to make up for my two week business trip. Yves was scheduled to arrive within the hour. I pushed Ra, one of my favorite which hasn't seen the light of day for over a year. Cody had never heard of the game and Brad owns it but had never played it. The first round was one of those never ending ones. Cody was the last bidder and easly pushed it the limit. Amazingly enough I scored the most points using with rivers and a triple culture. The second round hurt since I couldn't seem to snag a flood tile and I was also seriously lacking Pharoahs. The final round went rather quickly and most of us had unused auction chips at the of it. Everybody had collected six monuments but I had collected three sets of three. It didn't help since I had the lowest sun chip total and the least pharoahs again!
Brad (58), Cody (57), Me (37)

Home: We were still waiting for more arrivals, so I figured with could play a quick two tile, three flag, no options game of robo. This was Cody's first play and beginners luck was with him. Brad and I picked the same path to the flag which resulted in a tango of death between us. This gave cody an unobstructed path to victory.
Cody, Brad, Me

Home: Joe's favorite game is Robo so he was kind of disappointed that he had arrived just as we were finishing. Since the first game was rather quick we decided to play another one. We kept the same set up except that we changed the positions of the first and third flags. The change really messed up Cody cause he suffered newbie problems with the conveyer belt/gear interactions which sent him into a pit during the first turn. The rest of us took slight different paths to the flag. Since my route was longer I got to watch Joe and Brad tango. I came up from behind and cruised away to the final flag.
Me, Joe, Brad, Cody

Home: Yves finally arrived midway thru the 2nd robo game, so she had to wait about 30 minutes before she could play a game. Joe pushed for Ticket to Ride with the Mystery Train Expansion and everybody was down with it. Joe went over the rules for Yves. Boy, my first ticket set was quite a set. I had Montreal/Vancouver, Vancouver/Santa Fe, and Chicago/La, I kept all of them. Mid way through the game I started to regret my choice, the paths to Montreal and Santa Fe were getting blocked off. During one of my turns I had a new ticket on top of the deck so I dove for tickets. I scored two enginners cards and the Seattle/New york path. I used the engineers to pick more routes and complete the game with 66 points in routes.
Me (140), Brad (107), Joe, Cody (106), Yves (95)

Home: I bought this game about a year ago and I still hadn't played it. It turns out that this is one of Brad's favorite games, other than Kremlin. After the rules lesson we rolled for starting order.
Starting order: Brad, Joe, Yves and me
Brad amoeba's went for Movement, Tentacle and Struggle for Survival genes to make it an aggressive eating machine. Yves being second follow Brad's lead but didn't use the abilities like Brad did. I focus on Spores with Division Rate which made me food for Brad's amoebas. I forget what Joe did but I think he focused more on defensive/escape ablities. Brad ran away with the game, showing that previous play has a big advantage in this game.
Brad, Yves, Me, Joe

Home: Nate showed up, better late than never. We had five and the group decided on I'm the Boss. Joe made two killer deals in the final two turns. The first one with Brad and the other with Yves. He scooped up 30 points during those two deals.
Joe (51), Yves (37), Brad (23), Me (19), Nate (14)

Home: Brad and Joe wanted to give Boomtown a try. I figured this would be a game that Brad would like, I was pretty sure Joe would not enjoy it. This time I decide to be a little less aggressive with my bidding. I was bidding to stay until the winner would be the person to the left or right so I could get the most money or 2nd pick. I got off to a good start, becoming the major for two cities. Of course it made me the target. Eventually I got robbed, exporpirated and dynamited. But during the income phase, the dice were on my side. About half way thru the game Joe signaled that he didn't like this game, as expected.
Me (98), Joe (81), Brad (70), Nate (68), Yves (56)

Home: Dang, my first loss in this game since I figured out what I was doing wrong. Brad and Joe had good guard and stewart action plus they both shared a pretty large market. This time my stewart placement didn't pan out so I missed out on some end game scoring. Nate tried to breaking into a very high scoring guard row but the gap was never filled.
Brad (97), Joe (96), Me (91), Nate (70)

Home: Wow Nate is good. He figured what the missing gem was in about four rounds.
Nate, Brad, Me

Home: Well looks like Brad got Ra fever, he pushed for another play. I won this time by keeping the lead in Pharoahs, scored rivers every round and a triple culture. Nate really enjoyed this game and is looking forward to play it soon. Too bad I'm going away for three weeks.
Me (48), Nate (37), Brad (34)

Home: Last game of the night was another rarely played favorite. Got off to a great start and scored about half my points in the first round. Getting half your total in the first round usually means that the next two rounds are gonna be low. Nate stay consistent and scored enough points to tie for the win.
Nate, Me (1920), Brad (1090)