November 19 2003 RussCon Report

Game Results

2 games of Alhambra, yay! I have yet to do very well in this game, but I enjoy it. There seems to be a consensus that (at least with a large number of players) there is a lot of luck, but the process/experience of playing it is nonetheless interesting and enjoyable.

Tim and JP played as a team in Rummikub, and they took bizarrely long before they actually were able to bring out a meld. Or maybe it's just the old proverb about a mob being stupider than an individual. Anyway, it was weird, their rack was overflowing, and we almost actually ran out of tiles, which I've never seen happen before.

Drakon hadn't been played in a while. It's a risky game because it seems to arouse strong feelings of persecution, resentment, and anger. Anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to the dark side! Perhaps that's why Drakon hadn't been played much lately, even though I like the game itself: like Diplomacy, it seems to often bring out some strong emotions. As often happens, this game ended with a kingmaking situation. The situation was that JimG had 2 gold, William & I both had 3, and Tim had 4. On my next turn, I would move onto a 2-gold tile and win, unless William played a tile that would let Tim prevent that. He couldn't in fact play anything that would mess with me, but he could play a 2-gold tile onto which Tim could move and win before me. That is a good example of the sort of kingmaking situation that can start big debates. William played the tile to let Tim win. In my mind, this was perfectly justified kingmaking because it meant that William tied for 2nd place, whereas if I had won instead of Tim, William would have finished in 3rd place. However in William's mind, this was perfectly justified kingmaking because he was bugged at me for stealing 2 tiles from him earlier, instead of 1 from him and 1 from JimG, and since he just wanted to punish me, he would have made Tim win instead of me regardless of whether it improved his rank or not, which would be a more controversial form of kingmaking. (Some folks argue that if you are in a kingmaking position and neither choice changes your own outcome in the game, then etiquette dictates that you should "step aside" and let things take their natural course rather than interfering.) Anyway, the whole thing of "did Russ pick on William, and was it mean of him if he did" led to long debate afterward, about weighty controversial matters like whether one should just be playing for victory and high rank, or also for the enjoyment of the other players, as well as game design/psychology conundrums like whether you can have a good time in a game even if you've been smacked down. This seems to be a much more emotionally charged issue than, e.g., the question of, whether one should play for victory or high rank.

PJ and I had a thoroughly delightful and dramatic game of Cathedral. In the first game I made a ridiculous blunder and let him form a huge territory, removing the cathedral in the process. I felt lucky to lose that game by only 8 points. So I had to win the 2nd game of the match by 9 points to win the match: this would only happen if PJ made a hideous blunder, but he was playing simply and solidly... but luckily for me he eventually erred and let me cut off a piece in a territory. The neutral spaces were few, so that we couldn't even fit all our 1-square pieces into them, and had to put some in our own territories, which is unusual. All my pieces fit easily, but PJ had a tough problem. We counted his territory and found that if he could cover every square of it, his remaining unplaced pieces would be 8 squares, so it was worth it to agonize and try to fit the pieces optimally... and eventually he found a way! So the match ended up being a tie! Very fun.

MarkY and Crash played 2-player Guillotine (not normally done) and actually used up the entire Noble deck. I think the final score was something like 59 to 46 or some such huge scores.