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2004-12-01 RussCon Report

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This art requested by MarkH! :)


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News

14 of us played 14 games!

It is December which means there has already been talk of the now-traditional russcon white elephant gift exchange. We have done it after Christmas in the past (thus providing a way for people to jettison their recently acquired lame Christmas gifts), but white elephants are often done before Christmas. I am open to either way, so if you have a preference, let me know. I'll probably announce when it will be in next week's report.

Game Results

Attika4Marty 3 Jeffles 1 RussW -2 MarkH -2
Carabande5JimG 4 Ben 2 Jeffles 0 Marty -2 Whendy -4
SaintPetersburg4RussW 3 Clayton 1 Omar -1 MarkH -3
Carabande5Marty 4 Jeffles 2 JimG 0 Whendy -2 Ben -4
Medici6Marty 5 JimG 3 SarahM 1 Whendy -1 Ben -3 Jeffles -5
Carabande6JimG 5 Marty 2 Ben 2 Jeffles -1 Whendy -3 SarahM -5
Attika4Clayton 3 JP 1 RussW -1 Omar -3
Tichu2( Ben William ) 1 ( Chad Jeffles ) -1
EinfachGenial4Matt 3 SarahM 1 JimG -1 Whendy -3
RicochetRobot5Ben 4 Jeffles 2 RussW -1 Chad -1 Omar -4
SaintPetersburg3William 2 Jeffles 0 Chad -2
Attika4RussW 3 SarahM -1 Omar -1 Chad -1
Attika4Matt 3 JimG 1 SarahM -3 JP -1
Blokus4RussW 3 SarahM 0 Chad 0 Clayton -3

Carabande was indeed played at the table, as predicted last week.

The first game of Attika was crazy: I totally brainfartednd placed a tile which left a clear path of 3 hexes to a 2nd shrine for Marty, which he immediately exploited and won. Most embarrassing - apologies to Jeffles and MarkH for my stupidity! The second game I was in, all 3 of us failed to realize that by placing a tile, Clayton only needed 2 buildings to reach a 2nd shrine and win, so none of us prevented him easily doing just that. The third game I managed to connect 2 shrines. I begin to doubt the conventional wisdom that more games of this are won by getting all buildings out than by connecting shrines... Also in the last game, we all agreed that judging ranks by number of buildings on map seemed quite dubious, since someone could really be in a much better position even though they have fewer buildings on the board. So we just said all three of the losers tied for second. It makes one ponder how to determine ranks in games where one person achieves victory. In RoboRally we sometimes keep playing (like a real race) to see who gets to the finish 2nd, 3rd, etc. You could do the same in Attika, but that seems less pleasing for Attika. I also ponder our using gold to determine ranks in Drakon - again, someone with 4 gold may not truly be better off than someone with 3 gold who is next to a 2-gold room. But these are the sorts of questions that have no clear-cut objective answer.

Whatever mojo I once had for Ricochet Robot seems a distant memory now. Both Chad and I only gained 1 chit, against the unstoppable juggernauts Ben and Jeffles.

I had a pleasing win in Saint Petersburg, wherein I got a Library (7 VPs) early on and another building as well, defying the conventional wisdom that big buildings are not the way to win. It helped that halfway through I got the Mistress of Ceremonies, of course. The later 3-player game of Saint P was crazy and played intentionally "fast", supposedly to complete in 15 minutes or less, but apparently it actually took 25 minutes.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:    
 4.6052 Marty
 4.3175 JimG
 2.7726 RussW
 2.7726 Matt
 1.7918 William
 0.9808 Ben
 0.4055 Clayton
-0.9808 JP
-0.9808 Jeffles
-1.7916 SarahM
-2.0794 MarkH
-2.3666 Chad
-3.6889 Omar
-4.8929 Whendy
Win Ratings:
 4.3820 Marty won 3 of 5
 3.3604 RussW won 3 of 6
 2.7726 Matt won 2 of 2
 2.4204 JimG won 2 of 6
 1.7918 William won 2 of 2
 1.4916 Ben won 2 of 6
 0.8109 Clayton won 1 of 3
-0.5754 JP won 0 of 2
-0.5754 MarkH won 0 of 2
-1.0862 Omar won 0 of 4
-1.0987 Whendy won 0 of 5
-1.5155 SarahM won 0 of 6
-1.8971 Chad won 0 of 5
-2.4202 Jeffles won 0 of 8

Marty is the Devil! JimG and I are Co-Vice-Devils. Matt is Vice-Vice-Devil. Then William.

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

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

devil graph

Meta Game

Jeffles was the Meta Devil and designed the following Meta Game.

The meta game is jeffles random fun pecan craziness metagame. It'll be a short game (timed at 15 minutes) which will start at 7 if there are enough people there, if not then later at my discrettion.

Oh yeah, and there is a distinct possibility that I have to go out to dinner and drinks with work, which means I may be late, even quite late. In this case don't panic I'll be by eventually to start the meta game.

followed up by

I'm bringing a tray of leftover sandwiches tonight, which were leftover from Jason's deli catering at lotion. There's bread, meat, and lettuce on the meat ones with mustard and mayonaise on the side and bread, cucumber, tomatoe and lettuce on the veggie ones.

So if anyone wants them, feel free to have a light dinner.

See ya'll at 7 for some crazy sandwich and pecan madness!

Hurray for crazy sandwiches and pecans!

So Clayton, MarkH, Marty, Ben, Jeffles, and I all competed for ten minutes to construct towers that would hold a pecan higher than anyone else's edifice, using the random crap in a brown paper bag Jeffles gave each of us, consisting mostly of straws, toothpicks, paperclips, labels, stickers, pipe cleaners, and a few other things, along with, of course, pecans. Several of us dreamed big, with tall columns of straw - mine was reinforced with toothpicks taped along the sides to keep it more rigid and less flaccid like a limp, um, something - but I ran out of time before securing the base. Ben ended up winning with a more modest tower maybe two straws high. I'd have taken photos of our brilliant creations, but the camera wasn't working (dead battery it seems). So Ben is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Evening's Soundtrack

Melissa Etheridge, Brave and Crazy
Ozzy Osbourne, The Ozzman Cometh
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Purple Rain, Prince and the Revolution
Stone Cold Queen, A Tribute

CDs with crazy songs. Let's go brave and stone cold crazy diamond train.

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