|
News
|
 | Wizard | 5 | Clay 4 DaveB 2 William 0 MarkH -2 Ben -4 |
| Carcassonne | 4 | JonathanC 3 RussW 1 Clayton -1 Steve -3 | |
| PrincesOfFlorence | 5 | DaveB 4 Zack 2 Marty -1 JP -1 Whendy -4 | |
 | HookOrCrook | 5 | JonathanC 4 Clayton 2 RussW 0 Steve -2 MarkY -4 |
| Tichu | 2 | ( Clay MarkH ) 1 ( Ben William ) -1 |
| RoyalTurf | 3 | Steve 2 JP 0 DaveB -2 | |
| StephensonsRocket | 4 | JonathanC 3 RussW 1 RussD -1 MarkY -3 |
| SchottenTotten | 2 | DaveB 1 MarkY -1 | |
| SchottenTotten | 2 | MarkY 1 DaveB -1 | |
| Tichu | 2 | ( Dan Zack ) 1 ( Whendy Marty ) -1 |
| WebOfPower | 4 | RussW 3 Steve 1 JP -1 JonathanC -3 |
| Bluff | 5 | RussW 4 JonathanC 2 Dan 0 Steve -2 MarkY -4 | |
| Domination | 4 | RussW 0 JonathanC 0 Steve 0 MarkY 0 |
Games with queens or England aren't hard to find, but no one played a game with mothers.
By Hook Or Crook is one of the early German games, by Klaus "Settlers" Teuber, and published in the US by Avalon Hill, oddly enough. I've always enjoyed its elegant simultaneous decision mechanisms and amusing flavor art.
Sea Biscuit and I broke the conventional wisdom of Stephensons Rocket this game: RussD & MarkY each grew their own railroads unmolested while Sea Biscuit & I merged ours early on and battled for control of it. I thought therefore we'd come in last, but in fact we finished 1st and 2nd. Perhaps it's because our railroad was growing 2 times per round instead of 1 like the other 2? This game continues to fascinate.
Domination is an old Milton Bradley game William brought back from Houston. We naively started it around midnight. It's an abstract strategy game, and the game play is enjoyable and clever. Unfortunately it appears that in the endgame, rational play leads to the game never terminating. 2 hours later we mutually agreed to a 4-way draw. (Sadly, this was shortly after it had been proposed I be the winner, but we played on and then I made a booboo.) Next time, we'll have to try the alternate quicker victory conditions (based on whoever captures a certain number of pieces first, rather than total domination). Possibly this is a side-effect of playing it multiplayer, as I recall Whendy & I played this game about a decade ago at the long-lost High Time games bar on Congress and didn't have the nontermination problem.
Meta Party GameI was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Party Game I mailed out on April 1:This week's Meta Game: Rate My Poop This led to quite a bit of amusing email on the RussCon list, and a couple of apparently sincerely concerned private emails. On April 2 I mailed out the following clarification: As should be clear by now, the Meta Game I sent out on April 1 was fooling around (and based some private emails received, it may indeed have fooled a few people!) See the acrostic couplet of that email if further clues are needed:There were several England and Queen games, but no Mother games played. Only Sea Biscuit identified the soundtrack theme and told me. (I sportingly didn't go for the soundtrack theme bonus.) By my reckoning, the scores were:
|
Angelfish, Angelfish
Wayne Erbsen, Ballads & Songs of the Civil War
Kittywinder, Scream of the Weak
Pink Floyd, The Wall
Roger Waters, In The Flesh
These CDs have songs titled "Mummy Can't Drive", "Just Before the Battle, Mother", "Mom", "Mother", "Mother". Kudos to Dan for recognizing the photo of Shirley Manson from her pre-Garbage days.
Rank ratings: 1.0000 Clay (2 games played) 0.6000 Zack (2) 0.4500 JonathanC (6) 0.4500 RussW (6) 0.3333 DaveB (5) 0.2000 Dan (2) 0.1429 Clayton (2) -0.2000 MarkH (2) -0.2000 William (2) -0.2105 Steve (6) -0.2222 JP (3) -0.3333 RussD (1) -0.4000 Marty (2) -0.6875 MarkY (6) -1.0000 Ben (2) -1.0000 Whendy (2) |
New Win ratings: 1.0000 Clay (2) 0.4000 JonathanC (6) 0.2000 RussW (6) 0.1667 DaveB (5) 0.0000 Zack (2) 0.0000 Dan (2) 0.0000 MarkH (2) -0.1053 Steve (6) -0.1875 MarkY (6) -0.2857 Clayton (2) -0.3333 JP (3) -0.3333 RussD (1) -0.4000 William (2) -0.4000 Marty (2) -0.4000 Ben (2) -0.4000 Whendy (2) |
"The Trouble with Bunnies", a story by occasional RussCon attendee Jay Lake.
"The 300 Most Common Words", a story by Bruce Sterling.
Mark Simonson Studio has interesting font-geeky articles including "The Scourge of Arial" and "Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies".
Spamradio makes techno music with synthesized speech from spam.
Something Awful's Photoshopped boardgames.
long live the poop!
Check out my webcomics.