February 7 2001 RussCon Report

News

Game Results

Meta Party Game Results

Evening's Soundtrack

Ratings

Links

19 of us played 13 games.

RussCon Mailing List Subscription Info

RussCon Report Archives

Tales of Glory from the Job Hunt Trail

Comicollage: daily ongoing comic jam with 7 artists and no planning ahead! Currently imploding as some of us fail to get our strips up in time! Watch us crash and burn!

News

There is no news. Except maybe that Dan was unusually entertainingly punchy. I bet if I type the phrase "pummel you about the head and shoulders" he will giggle uncontrollably right now!

Game Results

Carcassonne	5	RussW 4 Dan 2 Clayton 0 Clay -2 Marty -4
TitanArena	5	PJ 4 Tim 2 Carly 0 RussD -2 ChrisH -4
Vino	4	Jeffles 3 Daniel 1 JP -1 Matt -3
Can'tStop	3	Matt 2 JP -1 Jeffles -1
StarVenture	6	Clay 5 Marty 3 Dan 1 RussW -1 Brady -3 Clayton -5
MississippiQueen	3	JP 2 Matt 0 Jeffles -2
DurchDieWueste	4	RussW 3 RussD 1 PJ -1 ChrisH -3
ZirkusFlohcati	3	PJ 2 RussW 0 RussD -2
Cartagena	3	Jeffles 2 JP -1 Matt -1
TajMahal	5	Dan 3 Tim 3 Daniel 0 Marty -2 Carly -4
WebOfPower	4	Dan 3 RussW 1 PJ -1 Marty -3
SpyAlley	4	Matt 3 Jeffles 0 Daniel 0 Carly -3
Bluff	5	Carly 4 PJ 2 RussW 0 Marty -2 Dan -4

Uh, yeah, so there's this new game called Carcassonne... You may have heard of it. I think I like it!

I had a hankering to play my own design, Star Venture, aka Space Camels, aka Andromedary. Usually I do better at it. Looks like giving 3 shares instead of 2 for founding a corporation was a good decision: I didn't found any corporations, and I came in 4th out of 6.

Continuing my ad hoc theme of placement games, I had a tie score with Dan in Web of Power -- but the little-known tie break rule gave him the win since he had more pieces left than I did at the end.

Bluff came down to an exciting upset! PJ had not lost any dice the whole game, and Carly only had 1 left. She whittled him down ruthlessly and ended up winning, amidst much excitement! Truly a glorious sight to behold. I once had a glorious game which came down to me with 2 dice versus Jay with all 5 of his, and I won. But I think this may be the first time someone with 1 die versus 5 dice achieved victory! Bravo.

Meta Party Game Results

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

Warlords Meta
Petty dictators who know that the only way for them to keep their positions of power is by demonstrations of power. Warlords reach out and strike blows at their enemies when the time is right, reminding them that there is a source of power out there that demands respect, or ELSE.
The Game : Everyone gets an index card and when they finish a game they write down everyone who finished under them in the placement. Choose your opponents wisely, for if they later finish higher than you in a game they remove themselves from your list and add you to their own. The goal is to have as many people on your list by the end of the night. No one adds or removes people in ties. And you do not get to add someone again if you beat them twice, the only way to add them back to your list is if they manage to remove themselves then you beat them again. Obviously the person who has the most people on their list is the ultimate warlord and next week's Metadevil.
Daniel el Metadiablo

So again it was a warlike theme, but this time the meta game had simple elegant German style mechanics. It was good fun.

People's fortunes ebbed and flowed, but by the end of the evening I had 6 names on my card! Quite a few people had 5. So I am the Meta Party Devil! I will email out next week's Meta Party Game.

Evening's Soundtrack

U2, War
Various Artists, At War With Society
Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
War Dance -- A War Music Compilation
The Civil War, Original Soundtrack Recording

War is hell.

Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.6250 Tim (2 games played)
 0.3750 PJ (5)
 0.3333 Clay (2)
 0.3333 RussW (6)
 0.2500 Dan (5)
 0.1667 Jeffles (5)
 0.1000 Daniel (3)
 0.0833 Matt (5)
-0.1111 JP (4)
-0.2000 Carly (4)
-0.3333 RussD (3)
-0.4000 Marty (5)
-0.5556 Clayton (2)
-0.6000 Brady (1)
-1.0000 ChrisH (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.4444 Clay (2)
 0.2500 Tim (2)
 0.1875 PJ (5)
 0.1667 Jeffles (5)
 0.1667 Matt (5)
 0.1500 Dan (5)
 0.1429 RussW (6)
 0.0000 Carly (4)
-0.1111 JP (4)
-0.2000 Brady (1)
-0.2222 Clayton (2)
-0.2857 ChrisH (2)
-0.3000 Marty (5)
-0.3333 RussD (3)
-0.4000 Daniel (3)

Clay and Tim are Co-Devils! PJ is Vice-Devil. I win the Dedicated Award.

Links

Some of you didn't follow my link to Icebox, so go check out Icebox now to see what Dan was singing about with Hard Drinkin' Lincoln. I also recommend Poker Night and Zombie College and Starship Regulars.

Some of us have had the pleasure of hearing Ernest Adams speak at the game dev conference. Here's a recent essay called Dogma 2001: A Challenge to Game Designers. I enjoyed the prohibition against freakin' space marines among other things; gave me a wave of nostalgia to game dev a couple years ago when I got to hear him preach it live!

Farewell, Warlord. We shall meet again.

Russ