2004-07-14 SansRussCon Report

News

Good evening, I'm JP Rodman reporting live from Week Two of ClaytonCon.

12 of us played 10 games! Two new games: The Big Two and Power Grid We had a visit from long lost SarahM (from whom Russ and I got our Flipside tickets).

The Big Two is a climbing game with an interesting set of allowed card plays. I particularly like that you can play a set of 4 with one other random card. I first learned The Big Two half my lifetime ago (14 years). It's not nearly as good as I remember it being, but I had a really high opinion of it back then, so I'm not saying it's bad, just a little flawed. I'd like to try it again with some of the rules changes we talked about like removing the score multipliers when you have most of your cards left at the end of the round.

I think Jeffles described Power Grid as "like Funkenschlag without all the tedious boring parts". I probably shouldn't put quotes around that since I really don't remember exactly what he said. ...and he definitely didn't include the hyperlink.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:
 2.7726 MarkH
 2.0794 Dan
 1.7918 KevinY
 1.5041 William
 0.2877 JP
 0.0000 MikeC
-0.2877 Matt
-0.4054 SarahM
-1.3863 Clayton
-1.3863 JimG
-2.1973 Ben
-3.1773 Marty

Win Ratings:
 2.7726 MarkH won 2 of 2
 1.7918 KevinY won 2 of 4
 1.6740 Dan won 2 of 3
 1.5041 JP won 2 of 4
 0.8109 William won 1 of 2
 0.4055 SarahM won 1 of 3
 0.1178 Matt won 1 of 3
-0.5754 MikeC won 0 of 2
-0.8630 Clayton won 0 of 3
-0.8630 Marty won 0 of 3
-1.2683 JimG won 0 of 3
-1.7916 Ben won 0 of 4

MarkH is the Devil! Dan and KevinY are Co-Vice-Devils.

If you are confused how the ratings work, just think of it as MAGIC.

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

I (JP) was the Meta Devil and designed the following Meta Game:

Pick any three games.

Guess how often each has been played at RussCon.

You score is the sum of the differences between each guess and the true value. The player with the lowest score wins.

For each game you chose that has been played less than 20 times at RussCon, 5 points will be added to your score. If it's been played less than 10 times, add 12 instead. If it's been played less than 5 times, add 30 instead.

You may submit your guesses via email or at RussCon.

You are not allowed to look at any previously published listing of games.

I received the following entries:

Russconer	Game	Guessed # Plays	Actual # Plays	Points	Total
William	"I'm a Fucking Genius" (Einfach Genial)	24	14	10+5	29
	"Flicky Game" (Crokinole)	45	39	6
	Cosmic Encounter	25	33	8
BradS	Tiddlywinks	1	1	0+30	90
	Ultimate Frisbee	0	0	0+30
	Foosball	0	0	0+30
Jeffles	Memoir '44	0	0	0+30	90
	Gopher It	0	0	0+30
	Chicken Pan	0	0	0+30
Marty	Tichu	165	241	76	99
	Taj Mahal	18	20	2
	Settlers	120	141	21
MikeC	SanJuan	12	11	1+5	117
	Ricochet Robot	137	38	99
	Tichu	253	241	12
Matt	Carcassone	110	214	104	204
	Flea Circus	60	130	70
	[No Third Entry]	0	0	0+30
Whendy	Tichu	53	241	188	355
	Bluff	88	235	147
	Acquire	38	58	20

I did not submit an entry of my own since I looked at the top games played when I made the report last week.

Some excerts from the email submissions:
BradS: I am on a mountaintop in the high Andes staying up all night awaiting the clouds to part. In the daytime, the condors fly around and the vizcachas gambol in the rocks.
Jeffles: There we'll make sure winning score must be under 90.

William won by a mile. He appeared to be using what I thought was an obvious strategy: pick games that you are fairly confident have been played in the 20-50 range. That way you don't incur the under 20 penalties and if you're off, it won't be by too much. I was impressed by some of the high number guesses. Marty had a pretty good Settlers guess and MikeC's Tichu guess was astoundingly accurate.

William is the MetaDevil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Ranking of all RussCon games as of 2004-07-07

Crokinole	2	Dan 1 Ben -1
TheBigTwo	4	Dan 3 KevinY 1 Ben -1 JP -3
Exxtra	3	KevinY 2 Dan 0 Ben -2
PowerGrid	4	MarkH 3 Clayton 1 MikeC -1 Marty -3
Euphrates	4	SarahM 3 JimG 1 JP -1 Matt -3
ArkOfTheCovenant	4	MarkH 3 MikeC 1 Marty -1 Clayton -3
AufHellerUndPfennig	3	William 2 Ben 0 KevinY -2
SanJuan	4	JP 3 Matt 1 JimG -1 SarahM -3
EinfachGenial	4	KevinY 3 William 1 Clayton -1 Marty -3
Entdecker	4	Matt 2 JP 2 SarahM -1 JimG -3

2004-07-14 SansRussCon Report

News

Game Results

Ratings

Meta Game

Evening's Soundtrack

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