July 4 2001 RussCon Report

News

There will be NO RUSSCON JULY 25. I'll be at the annual US Go Congress (along with JP, and RussCon satellites JeffS and JimCon...) There will be RussCon As Usual on July 11 and 18. Meanwhile I played a 19x19 game for the first time in far too long (on KGS), and I'm sure I will be crushed like a bug and humiliated at the Congress, yet it shall nonetheless be The Best Week Of The Year. Dan is back from Merry Olde England! He disavows all knowledge of certain recent postcards, so I can only assume they really are from Queens of England. I've heard from Alfred, who is no longer Lithuania-bound due to strange Belgian monk mysteries that sound too complex to understand. He's currently in St. Louis, with plans toward grad school in Rochester! Hopefully we'll see him again at RussCon sometime! Great Hall Games has moved to a larger space on the second floor of Dobie Mall. Several of us pitched in Saturday morning to help haul stuff. Brady & I also played a game of Toscana, which is a nifty 2-player tile placement game, vaguely reminiscent of a cross between Tayu and Cathedral perhaps. The retro-naughty postcard from a book cover painted by Eric Stanton arrived courtesy of Jay (who long-time RussCon attendees will remember moved to Oregon). Are the guys all bowing worshipfully, or are they admiring her red high heels? Probably a little of both.

Meta Party Game Results

JeffF is the winner.
I'll try to swing by Great Hall later today and let him know.

I was out of town (and away from email) til late last night, so I wasn't able to get this finished til just now. Since I'm so late with this, perhaps we should just allow Jeff to postpone his meta-devilhood till next week.

We had 23 submissions and 4 incorrect. (Not 3 as Russ suggested in the RussCon report (The other one we missed was #24.)) That makes 19, and as you can see on the winner table below, JeffF is #19.

I have to wonder if we submitted our results in time, since we got Divine Right right, and #5 had the following note: "Divine Right (OK, not everyone owns the game. The winner was the only one who recognized it)"

A few notes on the winner table:
I picked an assortment of people who have been to RussCon in the last few months. (Prior to last week, of course since I made this list b4 last RussCon. Really. I did.) I also tried to steer clear of people who had only ever come to RussCon once or twice.
(I seem to have a thing for metagames that people can win without actually attending RussCon...)
Of those people, anyone who I thought didn't want to be metadevil got the crappy spots first. I also gave myself a crappy spot to avoid questions of imporpriety. I then randomly assigned the remaining spots to the remaining people.
Brady brought the first color copy of the dragon list. This allowed him to take a spot or give his spot away. He chose to give his spot to me.

0  Clay
1  Whindy
2  Dan
3  Carly
4  Steve
5  Kara
6  ChrisH
7  Clayton
8  JP (was Brady)
9  JeffF
10 Bob
11 Tim
12 Daniel
13 Ben
14 RussD
15 Whendy
16 BobR
17 Dan
18 Jeffles
19 JeffF
20 William
21 Matt
22 DaveB
23 RussW
24 Marty
25 Matt
26 Steve
27 Daniel
28 RussW
29 Squeaky
30 SeaBiscuit
31 PJ
32 Bob
33 Jeffles
34 William
35 Steve
36 Marty
37 DaveD
38 Allen
39 PJ
40 BryanP
41 Alfred
42 JP

Some corrections:

Jeff mailed me that Mhing was the corect answer to #36. +1 dragon.

We guessed Samurai for #24 but the correct answer was LaoPengh. -1 dragon.

I guessed Diskwars and Cosmic Encounter randomly. I don't remember what I put for #22 (Cosmic Encounter) or #33 (LO5R CCG or LO5R Diskwars). I expect that we got 0.3 dragons from these guesses. +0.3 dragons.

So our final score was 20.3 which is pretty close to 20.

I'm pretty amazed at some of the dragons that we got. I'm disappointed at the following:

#2 Kings and Things. I have never played it but it's such a distinctive icon that I would think somebody would recognize it.

#12 Elfenroads. We should have double-checked Elfenland for this one although I don't know if we would have gotten Elfenroads even if we knew this wasn't Elfenland.

#15 Once Upon a Time. I knew Once Upon a Time would be in here somewhere but I couldn't find my copy. I called a friend to look for it but he never got back to me.

#22 Cosmic Encounter. We correctly guessed that Cosmic Encounter would be present but couldn't find an Eon edition.

Russ notes: I own Eon Cosmic but we didn't have enough care points to go upstairs and check it out.

#28 Der Ringgeister. A few people (myself included) wanted to call this game Lord of the Rings. "Der Ringgeister" translates to "The Ring Spirit".

#34 Dungeon. I've played Dungeon a few times and don't remember this card. Maybe it was from a different edition. I even thought to look in Dungeon but decided not to bother because I was sure I would recognize the art.

Russ notes: I own Dungeon and should have recognized this.