December 20 2000 RussCon Report

WebOfPower	3	Alfred 2 JeffF 0 RussW -2
LostCities	2	Fred 1 JP -1
ZirkusFlohcati	3	Fred 2 JP 0 RussD -2
UnionPacific	6	RussW 5 Alfred 3 JeffF 0 Clayton 0 Tim -3 Jeffles -5
Can'tStop	3	Carly 2 PJ -1 Steve -1
WheelOfHistory	4	JP 3 Fred 1 RussD -1 Remi -3
Carcassonne	5	JeffF 4 Clayton 1 Tim 1 JP -3 RussW -3
LunatixLoop	5	Jeffles 4 Alfred 2 Remi 0 RussD -2 Fred -4
Clue	6	Alfred 5 PJ 0 Fred 0 RussD 0 RussW 0 Remi -5
WhatsThatOnMyHead	6	JeffF 5 Carly 2 Steve 2 Tim -2 Jeffles -2 JP -5
Carcassonne	4	Alfred 3 PJ 1 JP -1 RussW -3
Tightrope	4	Steve 3 Jeffles 1 Tim -1 Carly -3

JeffF & Alfred arrived 15 minutes early, so we played "Speed Web Of Power", finishing in about 20 minutes. This made it all crazy since JeffF didn't win and Alfred came in first instead of last!

I then redeemed myself in Union Pacific.

But then I came in last in both games of the amazingly popular Carcassonne (which has already made it into the top 40 played games of RussCon, an impressive feat in its short time, given that we've played over 300 titles!)

Jeffles reports that Lunatix Loop was disappointing: too much racing around the loop, not enough car combat.

clue Inspired by this recent Games Journal article, I have been wanting to play that venerable boardgame Clue again. It had been years since most of us played it, and we were a bit rusty on the full extent of logical deduction one may apply in solving the murder of Mr. Boddy. It soon came back to me, but my notes were already slipshod and inconsistent.

I want to play again now that I know how I want to keep track of all the data! The silly detective book sheets that come with it are woefully inadequate for the serious sleuth! One needs to keep track of all the cards other players don't have as well as the sets of cards of which some indeterminate one was shown to another player. A higher meta level would be keeping track of who they were shown to and making some deductions from that, based on the assumption of rational perfect play by your opponents, but that's probably more than I'm willing to do...

Meta Party Game Results

RussD was the Meta Party Devil. Here is the meta party game he emailed out:

Twas the RussCon before Christmas
and all across the table,
not one Knizia game was played,
although the players were able....
Reiner Knizia is an extremely prolific creator of great games, which Santa and his elves love because it means they have a one stop source for games to deliver to all the good game players. For each distinct Knizia game played, each player receives one point on the good list. For each distinct game by another designer, each player loses a point. Distinct game means that the game must be different subject to the metadevil's discretion, so different language editions of a game count as the same game, but a game with an expansion (such as Seafarers for Settlers) counts as different from the original.
Santa counts his lists and checks it twice, but meanwhile the devil delights in the misery of the elves working overtime to produce all those extra games. The devil pronounces the player with the lowest score the winner of the game. Ties are broken by the highest total non-Knizia games played. If a tie remains, the winner is determined randonly by a means the metadevil deems acceptable.

This clarifies his entry from last week, which was unfortunately ambiguous with at least 3 plausible interpretations (as folks on the RussCon mailing list know)!

Once again, the Meta Party Devil skipped out early, leaving me the work of moderating the game... by my reckoning, Alfred played 5 non-Knizia titles and has a score of 5; everyone else is lower. So Alfred is again the Meta Party Devil! One hopes he won't bug out on his duties this time!

Evening's Soundtrack

American History X, original film score
Jean Michel Jarre, Equinoxe
Mox, Mox
Voice of the Beehive, Sex & Misery
101 X-Mas 101.5 KROX

Merry Xmas!

Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.7895 Alfred (5 games played)
 0.5625 JeffF (4)
 0.4000 Steve (3)
 0.1111 Clayton (2)
 0.1000 Carly (3)
 0.0000 Fred (5)
 0.0000 PJ (3)
-0.1176 Jeffles (4)
-0.1579 RussW (5)
-0.2941 Tim (4)
-0.3571 RussD (4)
-0.3889 JP (6)
-0.6667 Remi (3)

New Win ratings:
 0.4375 JeffF (4)
 0.4211 Alfred (5)
 0.1000 Steve (3)
 0.0588 Jeffles (4)
 0.0526 RussW (5)
 0.0000 Carly (3)
 0.0000 Fred (5)
-0.1111 JP (6)
-0.2222 Clayton (2)
-0.2353 Tim (4)
-0.2500 Remi (3)
-0.2857 RussD (4)
-0.3000 PJ (3)

Alfred is the Devil! JeffF is Vice-Devil. Steve is Vice-Vice-Devil. Then Fred, Jeffles, Carly, Clayton. JP wins the Dedicated Award.

Links

Werewolf looks like a fun party game we should try sometime!

Religion Selector has you answer some questions, then tells you what religion it thinks is most appropriate for you! It says the top 10 religions most closely aligned with my views are:

Theravada Buddhist (score=100)
Unitarian Universalist (score=85)
Mahayana Buddhist (score=73)
Humanist (score=72)
Liberal Quaker (score=69)
Neo-Pagan (score=62)
Atheist/Agnostic (score=56)
Hindu (score=48)
Jainism (score=48)
Orthodox Quaker (score=48)

Cool, Buddhism appears twice in my Top 10 List!

Did you miss the recent early music concert Squeaky played in? Yeah, me too, darn it. Keep better track of their upcoming performances by visiting the Texas Early Music Project web page.

Vatican Warns Against Increasingly Healthy Attitudes Toward Sex.

Fans of cheese & cheesy webpages should visit Cheese 4 U.

I make a "Suggestion": Miss Scarlet, in the bedroom, with the riding crop.

Russ