2004-06-09 RussCon Report

Game Results

RicochetRobot	6	Tim 5 RussW 3 Ben 0 KevinU 0 DaveB -3 Marty -5
Vampire	5	KevinY 3 Marty 3 RussW -1 MarkY -1 Matt -4
Crokinole	2	( MarkG Fred ) 1 ( Whendy Clayton ) -1
ZirkusFlohcati	3	Dudley 2 KevinY 0 MarkG -2
Crokinole	2	( KevinU DaveB ) 1 ( Ben Tim ) -1
SanJuan	4	Matt 3 Fred 1 Clayton -1 RussW -3
TooManyCooks	4	MarkG 3 KevinY 1 DaveB -1 Dudley -3
Goa	4	JP 3 MikeC 1 Fina -1 MarkH -3
Blokus	4	Clayton 3 RussW 1 Matt -1 Fred -3
Tichu	2	( Ben Tim ) 1 ( KevinU MarkY ) -1
Tutanchamun	3	DaveB 2 PJ 0 Matt -2
SanJuan	4	JP 3 RussW 1 Fina -1 Clayton -3
Bluff	4	KevinU 3 Matt 1 MarkY -1 Ben -3
Guillotine	4	KevinU 3 MarkY 1 Ben -2 Matt -2
RicochetRobot	3	JP 2 RussW 0 PJ -2
Cosmic	4	William 2 Dudley 2 MarkG -2 KevinY -2
Crokinole	2	KevinU 1 Ben -1
Crokinole	2	KevinU 1 JP -1
Labyrinth	2	KevinU 1 RussW -1
Labyrinth	2	KevinU 1 RussW -1
Crokinole	2	PJ 1 JP -1
Crokinole	2	JP 1 PJ -1

Ricochet Robot seems to be getting more and more popular. Later in the evening, JP and PJ and I experimented with playing it on a hex grid, which works but feels very strange!

I was very happy to finally get another chance to play San Juan (twice!) again. I am happy that I continue to enjoy it, even though I didn't do very well, and I want to play it some more. It has an awful lot of different buildings and possibly strategies. E.g. JP won the last game having built something insane like 8 production buildings and having the Guild Hall or whatever that gives you 2 points for each production building.

Goa is some new game MikeC brought, described as a meaty cross between Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence, and indeed it took them almost 3 hours to finish, I believe.

Labyrinth is a card game KevinU brought back from Germany - it's pretty simple and chaotic and luckbased, but interesting fun and has that pretty appeal of geomorphic tile maze games... We tried playing with hand sizes of 3 instead of 2 to permit a little more strategy/planning; unclear if that helped. So far we've only tried it 2-player but are curious to try with more (it supposedly works with up to 6 players.)

Crokinole is clearly quite popular lately as well!

A reminder: please write names unambiguously in The Book, with last initials for people like KevinU and KevinY.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:     
 5.5452 KevinU
 3.1781 JP
 1.7918 Tim
 0.6931 William
 0.6286 KevinY
 0.4700 DaveB
 0.4055 Dudley
 0.4055 MikeC
 0.2877 MarkG
-0.2877 Fred
-0.6931 Whendy
-0.8110 Fina
-0.8754 Marty
-0.9808 MarkY
-1.0987 Clayton
-1.0987 PJ
-1.3329 RussW
-1.3863 MarkH
-2.0152 Matt
-2.7726 Ben

Win Ratings:
 5.3629 KevinU won 7 of 9
 3.1781 JP won 4 of 6
 1.7918 Tim won 2 of 3
 1.5041 Dudley won 2 of 3
 1.3218 DaveB won 2 of 4
 0.9808 MarkG won 2 of 4
 0.7340 Marty won 1 of 2
 0.6931 William won 1 of 1
 0.1178 Fred won 1 of 3
 0.1178 Clayton won 1 of 4
-0.2877 MikeC won 0 of 1
-0.2877 MarkH won 0 of 1
-0.3930 Matt won 1 of 6
-0.4700 KevinY won 1 of 4
-0.5754 Fina won 0 of 2
-0.6931 Whendy won 0 of 1
-0.8110 PJ won 1 of 4
-1.4507 Ben won 1 of 6
-1.7796 MarkY won 0 of 4
-3.3467 RussW won 0 of 8

KevinU is the Devil! JP is Vice-Devil. Tim is Vice-Vice-Devil. Then William, Dudley and Dave!

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

MarkG was the Meta Devil and emailed out the following Meta Game:

I'm the Devil, be nice to me. Be my friend. Play games with me. Let me win.

Every game you play with me earns you one metapoint. If I come out with a better score than you do, you get another metapoint. If I win, you get a third metapoint. If you end up with a better score than me, you lose a metapoint.

I will be awarding arbitrary extra metapoints to people who are nice to me or give me nice things.

If Jeff Shaevel makes delicious pastries and brings them to share, he gets 3 metapoints (provided I get to have some). Anyone else should feel free to try to earn metapoints by bringing delicious pastries too.

(Sadly no delicious pastries materialized by JeffS, who sent his regrets!) MarkG kept track of meta points and told me who won - yay, no work for me! KevinY is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Evening's Soundtrack

Antietam, Comes Alive!
Yo La Tengo, Ride the Tiger
Yo La Tengo, Painful
Rasputina, Thanks for the Ether
Rasputina, The Lost & Found

I saw them all 3 play on Saturday night, yay! I've tended to avoid smoky music venues in recent years, but since I like all three of these bands, I went to Stubbs to check them out. I've seen Antietam and Yo La Tengo a couple times before, both a decade ago. They played outdoors; Antietam (who I thought had disbanded, but they're back together with a new album) opened to a small crowd, and then the popular eclectic Yo La Tengo filled the backyard. I kept missing Victorian corset cello rockers Rasputina in the past and was happy to finally see them live. Rasputina played indoors and the smallish room was way too cramped for the dense crowd, and way too smoky, but the music was great. Esperantistoj eble ĝuos mian pli longan koncertrecenzon.

Links

Welcome to America, Washington uses obscure visa as political weapon: Customs officials at LAX are overzealously enforcing a little-known requirement for journalists' visas, as one of many misguided measures to secure the homeland, and putting USA in the fine company of countries like Cuba, Serbia, China, Indonesia, Laos etc who are criticized repeatedly by respectable international press-freedom organizations for using "journalist visas" as a political weapon.

Gunner Palace: "The purpose of my visit was to embed myself with a unit for as long as they would have me. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, owing to the fact that I was briefly in the military and come from a military family, I found a unit that embraced my presence. The unit, 2/3 Field Artillery aka the "Gunner" Battalion was based in Uday Hussein's Azimiya Palace-sitting in the middle of Adhamiya, the most volatile area in Baghdad."

Tyson the skateboarding bulldog

Traffic Waves has interesting thoughts and experiments: "It's always a good idea to drive without changing speed and without competing with other drivers for bits of headway. But I'd always assumed that the reasons were philosophical rather than practical (i.e. try to be a calm, nice person.) But my above experience shows differently. A single solitary driver, if they stop "competing" and instead adopt some unusual driving habits, can actually wipe away some of the frustrating traffic patterns on a highway. That "nice" noncompetitive driver can erase traffic waves. I suspect that the opposite is also true: normal competitive behavior CREATES the traffic waves."

The Shining in 30 seconds with bunnies

To Ride A Trebuchet

Mangonel.com: ancient engines of war

HeadBlade is the ultimate head shaving razor. Perhaps JP needs one!

Vineyard's deaf past is retold in drama of signs and speech "What's remarkable is that no one in Chilmark thought it was remarkable. In this insular community, people just thought deafness was a common characteristic, one that didn't matter much more than height or hair color, because everyone here, hearing and deaf, knew sign language."

Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards that ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

Flash video for the Beatles "Come Together"

Sissy Boy Slap Party and Sombre Dolorosa are two short films by Guy Maddin, whose highly anticipated Saddest Music In The World is in theaters now (and, Our Most Assiduous Reader knows, will be viewed tonight at 6:50 at Dobie)

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