2005-03-30 RussCon Report

News

13 of us played 16 games!

Congrats to Jeffles who succeeded in his self-imposed challenge to lose 30 pounds in 35 days! The official weighing took place during RussCon... he had to remove some clothes to get under 210, but it worked!

Spanish/Esperanto: 2pm Sunday at Texspresso on Anderson Lane (by Alamo Drafthouse Village) is the weekly basic informal Spanish RussCon study group as well as the Esperanto formal study group.

Game Results

AuralAttack	2	Fina 1 Jeffles -1
BigBoggle	7	JP 6 KevinU 4 RussW 2 TimG 0 Ben -2 Dan -4 Clayton -6
StarVenture	6	Fina 5 Marty 3 RussW 1 SarahM -1 JP -3 TimG -5
FearsomeFloors	4	William 3 Jeffles -1 Ben -1 KevinU -1
AuralAttack	2	Dan 1 Jeffles -1
Tichu	2	( Dan Jeffles ) 1 ( KevinU Ben ) -1
AuralAttack	2	Dan 1 Whendy -1
AuralAttack	2	Whendy 1 Dan -1
AuralAttack	2	Dan 1 RussW -1
Carcassonne	3	Dan 2 Clayton 0 Whendy -2
RicochetRobot	4	JP 3 SarahM 1 RussW -1 TimG -3
Hearts	4	SarahM 3 Ben 1 Jeffles -1 William -3
Hearts	4	SarahM 3 William 1 Jeffles -1 Ben -3
Acquire	3	TimG 2 KevinU 0 JP -2
GiveMeTheBrain	4	Ben 3 Jeffles -1 SarahM -1 William -1
Zero	4	Jeffles 3 Ben 1 SarahM -1 William -3

Aural Attack (aka Oral Attack, Oral Sex Attack, though Dan's preferred name for it is Aüral Attack since umlauts are cool) is a dexterity game (analogous to Crokinole or Tiddlywinks) which Dan designed recently. It involves propelling pieces of cotton swabs by puffs of air out of squeeze bottles toward targets. It comes in a fine wooden cigar box, hand made in Honduras.

Star Venture (aka Andromedary) is a game I designed a few years ago, originally intended to have a computer implementation as well as work as a board game. It is somewhat reminiscent of Stephensons Rocket or Durch die Wüste. Thanks to Marty for being an enthusiastic supporter of the game through the years; I'm glad he suggested it for this evening. I like the game, and I'd forgotten about some of the strategy, and the amusingly frustrating way it accelerates to a conclusion faster than you want it to, with so many actions you'd like to do before the game ends. "If only I'd connected to this one outpost..."

The game of Acquire proceeded at a remarkably languid pace (I can only assume its three participants were savoring the exquisite gameplay) and should win an award: Longest Acquire Ever! :)

Ratings

Rank Ratings:       
 2.4849 Fina
 2.1972 SarahM
 2.0794 Dan
 1.3173 JP
 0.9163 Marty
 0.1178 KevinU
-0.3002 RussW
-0.6808 Ben
-0.6931 Jeffles
-1.0987 Whendy
-1.2683 William
-1.9456 Clayton
-2.0794 TimG

Win Ratings:
 3.0239 Dan won 5 of 7
 2.7444 JP won 2 of 4
 2.4849 Fina won 2 of 2
 1.7272 SarahM won 2 of 6
 0.4744 TimG won 1 of 4
 0.2355 William won 1 of 5
-0.1824 Marty won 0 of 1
-0.4054 Whendy won 1 of 3
-0.4576 Jeffles won 2 of 8
-0.5597 Clayton won 0 of 2
-0.6118 Ben won 1 of 7
-1.3171 RussW won 0 of 4
-1.5404 KevinU won 0 of 4

Dan and Fina are Co-Devils! JP and SarahM are Co-Vice-Devils.

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

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

SarahM was the Meta Devil and mailed out the following Meta Game:

The idea of this metagame is homemade.

1. Any homemade food brought to share at Russcon will receive 20 metapoints per recipe. (You don't have to make it yourself but it must pass for homemade.)

2. Any homemade game played, each player will receive 10 metapoints per game play. (Does not have to be an original game, but more than 50% must be created by hand or there must be a significant rule change.)

3. Any person participating in the creation a game at Russcon will receive 25 metapoints for each finished game. To be finished the game must go through at least one round of play testing, play testers gain additional metapoints as stated in 2.

4. Finally, if you wear any homemade clothing, you will receive 1 - 19 metapoints per item worn, based on quality or entertainment value.

I will retain final judgment on all metapoint awards.

Several folks brought homemade games. Besides Dan's Aüral Attack and my Star Venture, Whendy brought the card game Heironymous which she and Jennifer created a few years ago, and Jeffles brought his Set-like crazy game that he can't win which was played a few weeks ago. Various tasty homemade foods were brought, including 7-layer cookies by William (which curiously looked like tasty black bean tacos to me), and some tasty lemon parachute cookie thingies by Sarah, and muffins by Kevin. (Sarah also gave credit for delivered pizza, heh.) Kevin wore a homemade belt, and I modelled a hand painted shirt.

By Sarah's reckoning, I ended up scoring the most meta points, so I am the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Intellectual Marijuana: comics and their critics By Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester

Paid product placements in songs, groan

Curing Obesity through Sterility ... from the department of weird eugenics... there is some debate among friends whether this website is real or a hoax.

This is an example of hail damage to a commercial airliner

Methionylalanylthreonyl...leucine is the longest chemical name to be written down, with 64,060 letters.

Top 10 Vestigial Organs

Absolutely is Totally not Definitely