2005-02-09 RussCon Report

Game Results

Ben has been hankering to play Medici with other auction styles than once-around, so we played with simultaneous ("in the fist") style, and with the Dutch twist that the winner pays the second highest bid. The net result seemed to be people paying a little less overall for things, and (IMHO) more agonizing so the game took longer. Perhaps I have an unexpected traditionalist streak here - since the original rules seem to work fine, I feel like "if it ain't broke don't fix it". But I guess it is interesting to experiment sometimes. Aside from that, I got to experience first-hand how painful it can be to end the first round with only 2 goods in my hold while everyone else is maxed out at 5.

Fearsome Floors took way too long for me, with a whole lot of rule re-clarifying (due to the various special blocks, teleporters etc, which in practice take lots of explaining out of proportion to their actual effect on the game, seemingly), turn strategy agonizing, and chaos for such a long game. Alas. I wanted to like it as much as I remembered from a year ago. Maybe the group energy was just off. However it has sufficient numbers of fans who wanted to play it more, and they tried two monsters the second time, which made it much bloodier (and even more chaotic and less strategic, apparently) and left an impressive trail of dead.

The Magnetic Poetry game seems to be a very social/party type game. I've not yet played it myself. I received it in a (non-RussCon) white elephant gift exchange!