July 5 2000 RussCon Report

Fantasy War Game Results Evening's Soundtrack Ratings Links RussCon Report Archives Russ Zone

There were 17 of us, and we played 17 games! Welcome back to my old cohort Lance! Thanks to Kara for bringing nifty floor pillows. Hope everyone had a fun July 4. I saw Keeping the Faith since I'm an Edward Norton fan; it was ok, but inconsistent.

Fantasy War

I've got some folks wanting to play a new game of Fantasy War.

• I am RussiePoo.
• Brendan=bsegraves.
• David=MantisXIII.
• Daniel=maligno.
• Jay wants in, but needs to tell me his station name so I can create the private game.
• Sea Biscuit=Sea-Biscuit wants in, but is in Scotland, land of haggis, so we wait a few more days to start.

Game Results

Shark was an odd game Jeffles brought, kind of an Acquire wannabe, but with more randomness and with several glaring rules ambiguities. Also the distribution of money bills sucked as we kept running out of ones and would use fifties as ones. On the plus side, the monetary unit was not Dollars or Marks or something boring like that, but the Flying Turtle.

I won yet another Vampire game, and tied for 2nd in a 4 player Vampire game (JP had 22 points, Squeaky and I had 21...) Boy I like this game!

Union Pacific finally went seriously my way, as I got the first place UnPac payouts all 3 times. Woohoo! New player Lance got a solid 2nd place out of 6, too.

We tried Buried Treasure without the "advanced rule" of the starter cards in your hand. Playing only from the tableau makes the game go MUCH faster, and much more predictably. Not as fun, I think, but it was an interesting experiment. We did use the other "advanced rule" that a collected card may be placed in someone else's collection to induce ties. Without the uncertainty of secret starter cards, it becomes much easier to force a tie with certainty.

Last week JP was so disgusted with Ohne Furcht und Adel he walked out before the game was over (saying "I pass on my next turn", which the others ignored, giving JP more points and tying him with PJ who graciously let that stand). So imagine my surprise when he requested to play it again this week, and he won.

Quo Vadis is another Knizia game which, like Vampire, works with 3-5 players, and plays quite differently depending on the number of players. With 3 players, there's no real doubt everyone will make it into the senate, and it also plays more quickly (I suppose because there are fewer possible combinations of dealmaking). This RussCon classic is a cool voting game. You should check it out if you've never played it.

Evening's Soundtrack

Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.8182 Daniel (5)
 0.6800 RussW (8)
 0.5625 JP (4)
 0.3333 Allen (1)
 0.0833 Lance (3)
 0.0000 Dan (3)
-0.0909 Jeffles (8)
-0.1250 JonathanB (4)
-0.2500 Clayton (2)
-0.2500 Kara (2)
-0.2500 Marty (2)
-0.3333 ChrisH (3)
-0.3333 Susan (6)
-0.3333 Alex (4)
-0.4615 Jerrie (3)
-0.5000 Fred (2)
-0.7778 WendyWhe (3)

New Win ratings:
 0.7273 Daniel (5)
 0.6400 RussW (8)
 0.6250 JP (4)
 0.2500 Clayton (2)
-0.1364 Jeffles (8)
-0.2500 Lance (3)
-0.2500 JonathanB (4)
-0.2500 Kara (2)
-0.2500 Marty (2)
-0.2500 ChrisH (3)
-0.2500 Susan (6)
-0.2500 Fred (2)
-0.3077 Jerrie (3)
-0.3333 Allen (1)
-0.3333 WendyWhe (3)
-0.4000 Dan (3)
-0.4444 Alex (4)

Links

The Aquabats proved popular in the Evening's Soundtrack.

Cradle of Filth was also popular with some and, uh, commented on by others.

If you hurry, you might still get a bid in on Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, who's up for auction.

Final reminder of The Second International RoShamBo Programming Competition. Deadline July 10. Program an AI in C to play Rock-Scissors-Paper (which Jeffles, JP & I were playing a lot during lulls in the Waiting For Marty Game) and become internationally famous. I came in fourth in last year's competition!

My comic site actually has an ongoing storyline now, rapidly devolving into silly nonsense (but hopefully entertaining silly nonsense). Lately there's been a new strip up 5 or 6 days a week!

Russ