October 18 2000 RussCon Report


Game Results
Meta Party Game Results
Evening's Soundtrack
Ratings
Links
16 of us! 18 games. (Tim brought a friend Preetam who played just one unrecorded game of chess.)

This was a bicoastal RussCon: we had old-timer Jay visiting from Oregon, and rec.games.board denizen Richard Hutnik from New York (I think!).

skullNext Wednesday is October 25, 6 days before Halloween, but the closest RussCon before Halloween, so it will be the official Halloween RussCon. The first person to come in costume gets to be the Devil and usurp the throne from the regular Devil!

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Ko Fight Club
currently running a full story of Battle Cry and Dr. Manhattan!

Game Results

Drunter&Drueber3Jeffles 2 Steve 0 RussW -2
Survive4Dan 2 BobR 2 Clayton -1 Clay -3
QuoVadis4Jeffles 3 RussW 1 Steve -1 Matt -3
ResPublica4Carly 3 RichardH 1 Marty -1 JP -3
UndTschuess6Jeffles 5 RichardH 3 JP 1 Steve -1 Matt -3 RussW -5
Hare&Tortoise6Dan 5 BobR 3 Marty 1 RussD -1 Clay -3 Carly -5
Zero4Marty 3 Carly 1 RussD -1 Dan -3
Settlers4Steve 3 Matt 1 RussW -2 Jay -2
ZumKuckuck4Marty 3 BobR -1 Tim -1 RichardH -1
Cathedral2Dan 1 JP -1
Cathedral2JP 1 Dan -1
Guillotine4Jay 3 Steve 1 RussW -2 Matt -2
UndTschuess4Marty 3 Matt 1 JP -1 Jay -3
ZirkusFlohcati5Steve 4 JP 2 Jay -1 BobR -1 RussW -4
Vampire3BobR 2 Steve 0 RussW -2
Letras3Jay 2 BobR 0 JP -2
Tayu2RussW 1 Steve -1
Can'tStop3Jay 2 BobR -1 JP -1

I came in last in Drunter & Drueber, setting a precedent for most of my following games. Adding insult to injury, Jeffles and Steve promptly voted me off the island, so I was the first person voted out of the meta party game.

There is renewed interest in Survive! as it got played again!

A very curious game of Guillotine: Matt & I were the leaders as game's end approach, but somehow everything reversed and he & I ended up tying for last. No! How can this be!

Jay brought (and forgot to take with him) Letras, a game we discovered at ArmadilloCon. It's a word game (which explains JP's coming in last, with 0 points). Jay has far superior spelling and vocabulary skills (except he ironically misspelled the name of the game when recording it in The Book.)

My only win of the evening was Tayu. I seem to be on a Tayu roll lately. Such a nifty game!

Und Tschuess is a card game Richard brought that's vaguely like Raj or Tightrope. n players simultaneously bid on a sequence of n-1 random cards with increasing values. The lowest bidder takes the current card and drops out. Ties mean you bring out another card. Your bids accumulate. The wrinkle is that when there's only 2 players left (and thus 1 card), the higher bid gets the card. Thus the penultimate person gets no card. Which is sometimes a good thing, because a few of the cards have negative values. By hideous luck on the first 2 hands I ended up both times getting the worst possible card, value -10. JP bought a copy from Richard, so I expect we'll be playing this one some more.

JP, Jay, Bob and I also played a couple party games for fun later in the evening. Among other things, it was determined that Bob has never been to Michigan, and that whale smegma was used in ancient times to lubricate cabin boys (until they invented self-lubricating cabin boys).


Meta Party Game Results

Jeffles won last week and so was the Meta Party Devil! Here was the game he emailed out:

Survival.
The last survivor wins.
(Yes this game is not remotely fair)
The winner of each game wins temporary immunity, all the survivors in each game vote, with the winner breaking any ties. (So if someone in your game has been kicked off the island already they do not vote, unless they were the winner and need to break a tie)
All remaining survivors vote to kick someone off at 9:00, and each half hour thereafter.
If you arrive at Russ's after 9:00 you are not a survivor.
If you leave Russ's house you are not a survivor.
If any vote is tied, everyone with the most votes is kicked off.
If Russ wants to kick people out, he may force a vote or a game of rock paper scissors anytime he wants.

Since a person was voted out every time a game ended, our pool of survivors dropped fairly rapidly, and the final survivor is Tim! So Tim has the immense pleasure (as well as the mind-crushing responsibility) of determining next week's Meta Party Game!


Evening's Soundtrack

All Over Me, Original motion picture soundtrack
Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Music from the motion picture soundtrack
K's Choice, Paradise in Me
Marry Me Jane..., tick
Timbuk3, Looks Like Dark to Me

Oh, me! Pick me!

PJ picked the Timbuk3 as the seed CD last week, then didn't show up to hear it tonight! He gave me an easy challenge, as this week's theme was a natural sequel to last week's!


Ratings

Rank ratings:
 1.0000 Jeffles (3 games played)
 0.5294 Marty (5)
 0.3077 Dan (5)
 0.2727 RichardH (3)
 0.2174 Steve (8)
 0.1905 BobR (7)
 0.0588 Jay (6)
-0.0909 Carly (3)
-0.1905 JP (8)
-0.2500 RussD (2)
-0.3333 Tim (1)
-0.3333 Clayton (1)
-0.3529 Matt (5)
-0.6522 RussW (8)
-0.7500 Clay (2)


New Win ratings:
 1.0000 Jeffles (3)
 0.4615 Dan (5)
 0.4118 Marty (5)
 0.2353 Jay (6)
 0.0909 Carly (3)
 0.0435 Steve (8)
-0.0476 BobR (7)
-0.2500 RussD (2)
-0.2609 RussW (8)
-0.2727 RichardH (3)
-0.2857 JP (8)
-0.2941 Matt (5)
-0.3333 Tim (1)
-0.3750 Clay (2)
-0.6667 Clayton (1)
Jeffles is the Devil (even though he did bug out early, cavalierly abandoning his Meta Devil Host Duties)! (But remember you can snatch the power from Jeffles if you come in costume next week!) Marty and Dan are Vice-Devils.

Links

Here are some updated rules for Hoax. I especially like this new rule:
10. The coronation
The winner of the game chooses a player who must solemnly crown the winner with the the line "Long live the king of Hoax"

Cool -- a new use for my Medieval Times crown...

Dan has a nifty webpage with pictures of his painted Battle Cry miniatures and discussion of painting them.

Speaking of miniatures, someone really should buy The Hills Rise Wild! and bring it to RussCon. How can you go wrong with this description:
Old Wizard Whateley kicked the bucket!

And his precious copy of the Necronomicon, a book of powerful magic, is up for grabs. Now four factions of monstrous, power-hungry hillbillies must ransack the ramshackle shacks of Dunwich in a frantic search for the treasure. Pit your team of drooling horrors against your friends in an all-out battle of bullets, brawn, and brains. (Yum, brains!) The Hills Rise Wild! is a fast-play miniatures game that's light on the rules and heavy on the ghouls.

18 board tiles, 24 cardstock characters, 24 gruesome corpses, 32 playing cards, 96 folding status hats, 1 20-sided die, 1 pocket tape measure, rule book, faction sheets, charts, and the awesome Brutal Damage Table.

Disturbing news: Navy carrier to run Win 2000.

Something Awful has all kinds of stuff. I recently enjoyed reading their Chiefs fan prank. Those with a tolerance for Jeff K's ridiculous style may enjoy JEFF K.S" HAUNTED SCAREY HALOWEEN HAUNTED THEATAR !!!; I enjoyed TEH HAUNTED GHOT SCARREY OF JOHN ROMEROERO OF DAIEKTIANA TERRAOAR!!!!

Lobster Magnet is a funny flash cartoon music video thingie.

Atlas Comics presents THE 100 GREATEST AMERICAN COMIC BOOK ARTISTS OF ALL TIME. An interesting list. Man there are a lot of comic artists I'm unfamiliar with (that's what I get for not being a comics fanatic as a kid), but I know a lot more of them now than I used to.

I am happy my own Ko Fight Club was linked to by Steve Jackson Games' Daily Illuminator today!

You can get an answer to that age-old question Am I hot or not?" by posting your picture at this site. The voters seem to be a tough crowd, though...


"Matt, you sacrificed sex for gaming after all!"
"Well, she's gonna be up late anyway..."

Russ