November 22 2000 RussCon Report


News
Game Results
Meta Party Game Results
Evening's Soundtrack
Ratings
Links
14 of us! 15 games.
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News

I hope everyone had a fun Thanksgiving!

Carcassonne is a great new German game, kind of a cross between Entdecker, Euprate & Tigris, and The Very Clever Pipe Game. Players are growing a medieval city by tile placement. We played 3 games of it in a row on Thanksgiving. (And I won all 3, heh...) Thanks to Rob & Beka to hosting and for opening a store copy of the game. I have every intention of playing it more tonight at Great Hall. Woohoo!


Game Results

NichtDieBohne6Clay 5 Jerrie 3 Clayton 1 Dan -1 RussW -3 Matt -5
UndTschuess4Clayton 3 PJ 1 Steve -1 RussW -3
Schanzen4Clayton 3 RussW 1 PJ -1 Steve -3
DragonDelta5Matt 4 Clay -1 Dan -1 WendyWhe -1 Jerrie -1
Frank'sZoo5Matt 4 Steve 2 Clayton 0 Dan -2 Jerrie -4
DevilBunny3RussW 2 PJ 0 WendyWhe -2
Vampire4Steve 3 JonathanB 1 Jerrie -2 Kara -2
Euphrates4JP 3 Matt 0 Carly 0 Dan -3
Settlers4JonathanB 3 Carly 1 JP -2 Kara -2
Entdecker3RussW 2 PJ 0 Steve -2
WebOfPower5Brady 3 Kara 3 JP 0 JonathanB -2 Carly -4
BigCheese3JP 2 Matt 0 Carly -2
Guillotine4JP 3 Steve 1 Carly -1 Matt -3
Can'tStop4Matt 3 Steve 0 Carly 0 JP -3
Zero4Matt 3 Carly 1 Steve -1 JP -3

Nicht Die Bohne is another bean game we've been hearing about for a while but hadn't played before. It was fun. And now we finally have a RussCon game title that really starts with n...

Schanzen is another of the wooden games in Marty's Big Box of Expensive Wooden Knizia Games. It's fun in a Can't Stop kind of way. (It has 8 dice, so it really is twice the fun of Can't Stop!)

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham always goes a little slowly, but PJ is adept at agonizing, so this time was reallyslow. :) This particular game with me, PJ, and Wendy was for very high stakes indeed...

entdecker entdeckerI really like Entdecker. It's one of the first German games I bought after Settlers. It hadn't been played in too long. As it turns out, playing it this week was a strange foreshadowing, because the very next day I played the seemingly-Entdecker-inspired Carcassonne during Thanksgiving. They are both cool games involving random tile draw and placing to form regions: Entdecker has islands, and Carcassonne has cities/fields/roads.

It would appear that there was a rare tie in Web of Power, unless the game was recorded wrong. Did y'all know there is a tie breaker (if memory serves me right... I think JeffF mentioned this a week or two ago.)

Unrecorded is some messing around on the go board, as PJ & I played a couple games, as did PJ & JP. I have been getting more and more into go again lately after not paying it enough attention this past year. It's fun to be back into the swing of it, since go is after all the greatest game.


Meta Party Game Results

Alfred was the Meta Party Devil, but he didn't mail out a meta party game. (No doubt there's some lame-o reason involving term papers or Thanksgiving holidays... no sense of priorities!) So I improvised.

The first meta thing was to see who asked what was up with the meta party game. The first 2 inquirers were alert gamers Wendy & PJ. Then whichever of them could detect the Evening's Soundtrack theme first would be the Meta Party Devil. Sadly, neither could... the closest they got was noticing that they all had a Robert Plant song... close, but not quite. So I played the 3-player game of Devil Bunny Needs A Ham with them, winner take all. I won. So I will compose a meta party game for next week!


Evening's Soundtrack

Tori Amos, Crucify
The Flaming Lips, 1984-1990
Encomium, a tribute to Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin, BBC Sessions

The common theme? These albums all have a recording of the LedZep song "Thank You". That's one of my favorite songs, and quite appropriate for the holiday, eh?


Ratings

Rank ratings:
 0.7500 Brady (1 game played)
 0.4667 Clayton (4)
 0.4444 Clay (2)
 0.2222 Matt (8)
 0.2000 JonathanB (3)
 0.0000 JP (7)
 0.0000 PJ (4)
-0.0417 Steve (8)
-0.0667 RussW (5)
-0.1000 Kara (3)
-0.2381 Carly (7)
-0.2500 Jerrie (4)
-0.4375 Dan (4)
-0.5000 WendyWhe (2)

New Win ratings:
 0.7500 Brady (1)
 0.4444 Clay (2)
 0.3704 Matt (8)
 0.2667 Clayton (4)
 0.1429 JP (7)
 0.1000 Kara (3)
 0.0667 RussW (5)
 0.0000 JonathanB (3)
-0.1667 Steve (8)
-0.2500 Jerrie (4)
-0.2500 Dan (4)
-0.3333 WendyWhe (2)
-0.3810 Carly (7)
-0.4000 PJ (4)
Brady has pulled off the eponymous Brady Maneuver! So Clayton is the Devil! Woohoo! Then Clay, Matt, JP, JonathanB... Matt and Steve share the Dedicated Award.

Links

The industrious Dan has been creating his own unique 3D Settlers tiles, and has a webpage with info and photos. He brought a few specimens this week at RussCon, and the tiles are terrific looking. There are even little painted sheep in the pasture! Very cool. We talked about other games this molded resin technology could be applied to. Battle Cry tiles leapt to mind. I think it might be cool to see DungeonQuest tiles made this way too!

Guitarists will surely want a gun guitar and bass.

It's the giant eye of a Lovecraftian cosmic horror staring at you! No wait, it's cool movies of Jupiter, taken by the Cassini probe.


Little drops of rain whisper of the pain
Tears of loves lost in the days gone by

Russ