Dec 23 RussCon Report

There were only 8 of us, not surprisingly since it was Dec 23 and the weather was nasty! We observed that a very light RussCon turnout is still bigger than many gaming groups get! Such a relatively small crowd made it feel like the early days of RussCon, which was kind of fun. I hope everyone else was having enjoyable holidays too!

For Christmas I got a German import game by Alan Moon called Rainbows. I suspect other folks will have new games from Christmas to try out as well.

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Games played:

Medici 5 KevinH 4 William 2 RussW 0 JP -2 Doug -4
Manhattan 4 WendyWhe 2 KevinH 2 Harry -1 RussW -3
Samurai 4 JP 3 William 1 Clayton -1 Doug -3
Guillotine 5 KevinH 4 RussW 2 Clayton 0 WendyWhe -2 Doug -4
Guillotine 4 RussW 3 Clayton 1 WendyWhe -1 Doug -3
LastChance 5 JP 4 WendyWhe 2 RussW 0 Doug -2 William -4
QuoVadis 4 RussW 3 William 1 JP -1 Doug -3

I got to break in my shiny new copy of Quo Vadis. Hoody-hoo!

We also played Spammers, but adjourned the game due to playing with a major rules glitch by mistake. Too bad we noticed this just before I had a shot at winning. :-) It was fun, and we plan to play it again (correctly). I'd only played it once before, with 3 people. It did take longer with 5.

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Evening's Soundtrack:

Evil Stig (the Gits live)
Out Loud: for the human rights and freedom of lesbians and gays
Sinead O'Connor, My Special Child
Across the Great Divide: Songs of Jo Carol Pierce
101.5 KROX, 101X-Mas

The theme? The proceeds from all these albums are given to various worthy causes:

On July 7, 1993, Mia Zapata, the lead vocalist of the Gits, was brutally raped and murdered. Royalties from this project will help to fund the ongoing investigation into Mia's death. Additional funds will be donated to groups dealing with curtailing abuse of women.

Out Loud is a benefit for the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Sinead O'Connor's artist royalties will be donated to The International Red Cross.

Proceeds from Across the Great Divide benefit the Austin Rape Crisis Center.

The proceeds from 101X-Mas will help Austin Habitat for Humanity's ongoing mission of creating affordable housing one family at a time.

...'Tis the season. Give something to a charity!

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Rank ratings:
 0.9091 KevinH (3 games played)
 0.2857 JP (4)
 0.2381 RussW (6)
 0.0714 WendyWhe (4)
 0.0000 Clayton (3)
 0.0000 William (4)
-0.3333 Harry (1)
-0.9048 Doug (6)

Win ratings:
 1.0000 KevinH (3)
 0.5500 JP (4)
 0.1538 RussW (6)
-0.1304 WendyWhe (4)
-1.0000 Clayton (3)
-1.0000 William (4)
-1.0000 Harry (1)
-1.0000 Doug (6)

Wow, since there were only 8 of us, the ratings came out very simple: the orderings by rank and win agree with each other! So no messy partial order figuring is needed to see that Kevin is the Devil, JP is Vice Devil, and I'm Vice Vice Devil. Clayton and William share the Extra Average Award. Doug and I share the Dedicated Award.

A minor technical note illustrating a property of the ratings formulas: Kevin won all 3 of his games, hence his 1.0 win rating. His rank rating is a little less than 1.0 since one of those wins was a joint victory (with Wendy in Manhattan).

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Think I'm going to have to have another Christmas beer

Russ