November 20 2002 RussCon Report

Game Results

Can'tStop	4	RussW 3 BobR 1 Steve -1 JP -3
Tichu	2	( Ben MarkH ) 1 ( Dan JimG ) -1
BuriedTreasure	4	Marty 3 MarkY 1 RussW -1 Matt -3
Can'tStop	2	MarkY 1 Marty -1
CarcassonneHunters	4	RussW 3 JonathanC 1 William -1 Matt -3
Chrononauts	4	MarkY 3 William -1 Ben -1 Matt -1
Tichu	2	( Marty Ben ) 1 ( MarkY MarkH ) -1
PuertoRico	5	Clayton 4 JP 2 Steve 0 BobR -2 Carly -4
Acquire	4	RussW 3 RussD 1 Marty -1 JonathanC -3
Can'tStop	4	Brady 3 William 0 Matt 0 MarkY -3
Transamerica	5	Brady 4 RussD 1 Matt 1 William -2 RussW -4
HammerOfTheScots	2	Dan 1 JimG -1
CarcassonneHunters	3	Steve 2 JP 0 Clayton -2

Acquire, Buried Treasure, and Can't Stop were played for meta reasons.

Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers is pretty cool. It's got some familiar mechanics from Carcassonne, plus some new ideas, e.g. in addition to meeples there are huts which have different placement and scoring rules. The tiles have more stuff on them: various combinations of fish and mammals and some special tiles like mushrooms and a stonehenge thingie. So it's like a more complex version of Carcassonne, and a sufficiently different game (it's not an expansion) that I'm recording it as its own title. Well worth checking out.

Dan and Jim spent most of the evening playing Hammer of the Scots, which is the new wooden block system wargame from Columbia Games.

A reminder: please write and spell clearly when recording game results, make the scores and ranks clear, and remember last initials for people with common names like Mark, thanks!

Meta Game

I was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game I mailed out:

The Great Games of Sid Sackson
http://www.webnoir.com/bob/sackson.htm

In appreciation of Sid Sackson, you are encouraged to play a variety of the games he designed.

Earn a Meta Point for each different Sid Sackson title you play. Most Meta Points wins!

As previously noted, some Sid Sackson games we've played at RussCon include: Acquire, Can't Stop, Buried Treasure, Samarkand, Metropolis, Executive Decision, Gold Connection, Kohle Kie$ & Knete, Domination, and even a game or two from his book Gamut of Games... if you have these or any other Sackson games, you're encouraged to bring them.

The tie-breaker is whoever brings the most Sackson games (a Sackson book counts as 1 game). If a goodly number of Sackson games show up, we'll put all the Sackson games in a pile and take a picture for posterity...

Further ties broken randomly.

Marty & I both played all 3 titles which were played (Acquire, Buried Treasure, Can't Stop). Marty & I both brought 5 Sackson titles. So I rolled my traditional meta tie-breaker die (from my original copy of Dungeon) and I won the tie-breaker. I solemnly vow to design a Meta Game for next week which I will not win.

Reminder of the new incentive to compete in the Meta Game: The Meta Devil gets full table rights, just like a regular Devil from now on, so they could stake out the dining table or the kitchen table. Of course Vice-Devils continue to get secondary dibs on the tables if no higher-ranking Devil or Meta Devil takes a table.

Evening's Soundtrack

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Madonna
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Relative Ways/Homage
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Source Tags & Codes

I've just been into Trail of Dead lately. If you are too, check out the Relative Ways video on their front page.

Ratings

New Multiplicative Rank Ratings:    
 2.9957 20.0000 Brady (2)
 2.1440 8.5333 RussW (5)
 1.0986 3.0000 Ben (3)
 0.9808 2.6667 Marty (4)
 0.6931 2.0000 Steve (3)
 0.6931 2.0000 RussD (2)
 0.5108 1.6667 Clayton (2)
 0.4055 1.5000 MarkY (5)
 0.0000 1.0000 Dan (2)
 0.0000 1.0000 MarkH (2)
-0.2877 0.7500 BobR (2)
-0.6931 0.5000 JP (3)
-0.9808 0.3750 JonathanC (2)
-1.3863 0.2500 William (4)
-1.3863 0.2500 JimG (2)
-1.6094 0.2000 Carly (1)
-2.7726 0.0625 Matt (5)

New Multiplicative Win Ratings:
 3.6481 38.4000 RussW won 3 of 5
 2.9957 20.0000 Brady won 2 of 2
 1.2040 3.3333 Clayton won 1 of 2
 1.0986 3.0000 Ben won 2 of 3
 1.0986 3.0000 Marty won 2 of 4
 0.8109 2.2500 MarkY won 2 of 5
 0.5878 1.8000 Steve won 1 of 3
 0.0000 1.0000 Dan won 1 of 2
 0.0000 1.0000 MarkH won 1 of 2
-0.2231 0.8000 Carly won 0 of 1
-0.5108 0.6000 RussD won 0 of 2
-0.5108 0.6000 BobR won 0 of 2
-0.5754 0.5625 JonathanC won 0 of 2
-0.9163 0.4000 JP won 0 of 3
-1.0862 0.3375 William won 0 of 4
-1.3739 0.2531 Matt won 0 of 5
-1.3863 0.2500 JimG won 0 of 2

Brady & I are Co-Devils! Ben and Clayton are Co-Vice-Devils. Marty is Vice-Vice-Devil. Dan and MarkH both win the Extra Average Award, which is now conveniently easy to do when you play an even number of 2-player games!

Links

If you've seen the fish-shaped soy sauce container William brought, you'll especially enjoy this inexplicable Japanese Flash animation

Matrix-style Kung Fu action with a cow

Sadly, the trance vibrator is only sold in Japan, or I'd finally have a compelling reason to buy a Playstation2.

Der Kartentower will hold your Carcassonne or Drakon tiles during play!

Akiyoshi's illusion pages are very cool

Scantily-clad Madonnas upset Church: I want to see this calendar!

What would Jesus drive? Not a frickin' gas-guzzler!

Energy and War has lots of links related to oil and the War on Terrorism; e.g. the World Petroleum Consumption is interesting.

How to Model a Bishop: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis applied to XML design debates about element vs attribute

If you generate crufty html via any Microsoft tools, you might want demoroniser... "(Rule of thumb--every time Microsoft use the word "smart," be on the lookout for something dumb)"

limmy.com xylophone is not for the easily offended

poopreport.com