April 14 1999 RussCon Report

It was an unusually small turnout, just 9 of us! It felt like the first RussCon ever, in January 1998 where we had only 2 games in parallel.

This could be attributed to the warning about my air conditioning being dead (but ironically the weather was cool that night), or to people doing their income taxes for the April 15 deadline, or to a scandalous rumor I heard of a traitorous Age of Renaissance game going on elsewhere that evening. (Incidentally the AC is still not fixed; this will probably occur next week.)

Thanks to Gary of Zzyzx for planning his trip to Austin to permit a second RussCon visit! Off-planet visitors are especially welcome to RussCon.

This Report is unusually late getting to our publisher by the way, due to your humble editor having been out of town over the weekend for a 2-day go tournament in Houston, which was quite tiring but enjoyable. I won 5 of 7 games, which was pleasing and gained me 2nd place out of the dozen or so in my handicap band.

There is talk of seeing Twelfth Night this coming Saturday night (April 24). Email me if you're interested and want confirmation of this plan. And don't forget RussCon's very own Squeaky will be jamming early music tunes on his lute with several cohorts for free next Monday night!

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Game Results:

Bluff 6 Tim 5 Clayton 3 Marty 1 RussW -1 Jeffles -3 JP -5
Bluff 3 Marty 2 RussW 0 Tim -2
StarbaseJeff 3 JP 2 WendyWhe 0 Jeffles -2
Ra 5 Clayton 4 RussW 2 Marty 0 Gary -2 Tim -4
Palmyra 3 Brady 2 Gary 0 JP -2
Bohnanza 3 JP 1 Jeffles 1 WendyWhe -2
MississippiQueen 3 Gary 2 Tim 0 JP -2
Acquire 4 Marty 3 WendyWhe 1 RussW -1 Jeffles -3
Bluff 4 Jeffles 3 Marty 1 RussW -1 WendyWhe -3
Bluff 4 Marty 3 Jeffles 1 WendyWhe -1 RussW -3
Bluff 4 RussW 3 Marty 0 WendyWhe 0 Jeffles -3
Bluff 6 Gary 5 Jeffles 3 JP 0 RussW 0 Marty -3 Brady -5

Bluff is simply a terrific little filler game as you see. Some games were quite exciting with rather extravagant bids. E.g. there was a player completely eliminated on the first challenge of a game! If memory serves, this in fact happened to 2 different people, who shall remain nameless to protect the embarrassed.

We enjoyed Ra, Marty's new Knizia game. It's vaguely analogous to Medici (3 rounds of bidding on lots) but with more complicated varieties of scoring points, and each round you get to bid on 3 lots (of whatever size), rather than bidding until you accumulate a fixed number of items.

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Evening's Soundtrack:

King Crimson, In the Wake of Poseidon
Jeremy Enigk, Return of the Frog Queen
Prince & The Revolution, Purple Rain
Genesis, Duke
Queen, A Night at the Opera

Only a royal idiot could not detect the common theme.

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Rank ratings:
 0.7778 Clayton (2)
 0.3846 Gary (4)
 0.2500 Marty (8)
-0.0357 RussW (8)
-0.0769 Tim (4)
-0.1154 Jeffles (8)
-0.3125 WendyWhe (6)
-0.3333 JP (6)
-0.4286 Brady (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.3846 Gary (4)
 0.3333 Clayton (2)
 0.1538 Tim (4)
 0.1429 Brady (2)
 0.1071 Marty (8)
-0.0556 JP (6)
-0.0769 Jeffles (8)
-0.1429 RussW (8)
-0.4375 WendyWhe (6)

Therefore the Co-Devils are Clayton and Gary! I have a sneaking suspicion that Clayton is far more likely to show up and claim the dining table than Gary. Jeffles, Marty and I share the Dedicated Award.

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"Sports are for losers. Winners play go!"

Russ