Wednesday April 22 RussCon Report
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Another good turnout: 14 people, with 4 gaming tracks! 15 games were played -- whew!
That Devil Ken, eager to play a Real Game (i.e. one lasting more than 2 hours), chose to exercise his Devil Rights and play Successors on the dining table.
That Co-Devil RussD arrived too late and was banished to the floor with the rest of us losers.
We had another visiting dignitary from out-of-town, Gary of planet Zzyzx. I am gratified that news of RussCon is travelling so far across the galaxy!
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Game Results:
Brady won Settlers.
RussD & RussW tied a very close game of Entdecker! Our scores were tied before we added the final discovery chip bonus, then we discovered all of us had the same number of discovery chips as well!
RussW finally won a game of Fight. It was about time, sheesh... (JP remains the true Fight Master.)
Jay played Euphrates for the first time and actually won, rare for a newbie! (With a final score of 11, no less!)
Two games of Ghost Party were won by Jay and JonathanB.
Marty won the Brady Variant of Settlers with some sort of weird hex metropolitan upgrade rules concocted by that madman Brady. (One wacky bit of explanation I caught: "Since that's a grain hex, you draw from this pile [out of about 8 colored piles of face-down random new hexes] because this is not the brown pile.") Marty and Gary said it was a good variant. Cool full-color arty components supplied by Brady. [And Brady, I found a purple Settlers road on the floor I'll keep safe for you.]
Marty also won a game of Euphrates.
RussD won Medici.
William and Brady each won a game of Fight.
James won the long game of Successors.
William won The Lost Pueblo of Doctor Green. This was a skillfully played hard-fought battle on William's part, made all the more impressive by his winning even before he got to perform a turn... My explaining the rules actually took longer than the playing of the game. Lost Pueblo is another of the free games from www.cheapass.com -- I doubt we'll ever play it again. It's as broken as Fight is good & clever.
Marty won Entdecker.
Ken won Euphrates.
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Ratings for the evening:
Rank ratings: 0.63 Jay 0.59 Marty 0.31 Ken 0.29 JonathanB 0.12 RussD 0.10 Brady 0.08 JP -0.07 William -0.15 James -0.16 RussW -0.43 Gary -0.46 Alfred -1.00 Clayton -1.00 Tim Win ratings: 0.65 Marty 0.58 Jay 0.33 Ken 0.33 James 0.24 RussD 0.04 William 0.02 Brady -0.24 RussW -0.26 JonathanB -1.00 JP -1.00 Gary -1.00 Alfred -1.00 Clayton -1.00 Tim
Last week's partial order of the rating pairs was quite symmetrical and pretty. This week it's interestingly messy. View it with a fixed width font:
Jay & Marty (incomparable)
/ |
/ |
Ken |
/ | \ |
/ | \ |
/ | \ |
/ | \ |
/ | \ |
/ RussD \ |
/ / \ \ |
JonathanB Brady William James
\ | \ | /
\ | \ | /
\ | \ | /
\ | \ | /
JP RussW
\ /
\ /
Gary
Alfred
Tim = Clayton
I.e. Neither Jay nor Marty was > the other. They were both > all others. Ken was > everyone but Jay & Marty. RussD > Brady & William. JonathanB & Brady & William & James were all incomparable. Etc.
This implies that Jay and Marty are both the Devils for this week. Congratulations! Sympathies to Tim and Clayton, Co-Angels for the week.
Jay gets the Sporting Award; he'd won his first 2 games of the evening, and thus could have retired as a certain Devil, but he gamely played on, losing some, but still managed to achieve Devilhood. And thus justice was served.
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Another way to look at the partial order:
Suppose for a given player you count the number of players they are >, and the number of players > them, and take the difference. This gives a simple total ordering on the players. Here are the results:
Jay, Marty 12 (12-0)
Ken 9 (11-2)
RussD 5 (8-3)
Brady 2 (6-4)
James, JonathanB 2 (5-3)
William 1 (5-4)
JP -2 (4-6)
RussW -3 (4-7)
Gary -7 (3-10)
Alfred -9 (2-11)
Clayton, Tim -12 (0-12)
E.g. if we were gambling and said that you had to pay $1 to each person who was > you, then the table shows your net monetary gain for the evening. Note that the numbers sum to 0.
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Remember, there is no RussCon on Wednesday May 6. There WILL be RussCon As Usual on Wednesday April 29 at 7:00 pm.
And there will be Sunday gaming at 1:00 pm. At this point, it looks like the long game will probably be Throne World, and if more people show up, short gaming is fine too. Here's the current roster:
Me, Jay, Ken, Bob for a long game. (Good to see you again, Bob!) Marty & Clayton for short, maybe long. Anyone else who's interested, email me or phone me (xxx-xxxx), or just come on by and take your chances!
Russ