2004-03-31 RussCon Report

Game Results

Don't Wake The Giant is a German version of the childhood classic dexterity game Operation! Through good fortune I happened to draw the cards for the 2 most valuable items ($1500 and $2000), so I was unstoppable. Poor Jeffles drew the 2 cheapest items (both $200), but luckily for him Steve only got one item successfully ($300) - during the suspenseful extraction of the other, he touched the edge and giant buzzed, startling him so much that he knocked the board into the air spilling the remaining pieces out of their compartments! Woohoo, good fun! Among the more bizarre of the treasures one could steal from the giant is his, um, gold pouch, er, family jewels, or codpiece, or whatever that thing is.

We had an enjoyable game of Drakon. Again I emphasize to nay-sayers: with the expansion set, the game goes faster, and has more variety! E.g. the famous tile-stealing happened only twice in this session. The kingmaker situations always arise, however. In this case, Steve reached a point where it was clear that Jeffles would win on his next turn, or else I would immediately win after Jeffles's turn. Steve had control over which of us would win. Perhaps partly based on the heuristic of "delay whoever is going to win sooner" and perhaps partly based on guilt for screwing me earlier in the game, Steve messed with Jeffles and so I won. Among my many projects I want to do but probably won't get around to is translating Drakon to Esperanto (and making a nice single page color chart of all the tiles). The rules already come in like a half dozen languages! So hey, why not one more?

So having won my first 2 games of the evening, I thought I was on a roll, till I ended up last place with a pathetic score of just one point in Titan the Arena! Alas, my poor troll (secret bet and first round bet) was slain early...

Looking over past records of Clue: The Great Museum Caper, I see that we've usually just played it for one round (as a team versus the solo thief), so it was a rare luxury to play it properly, with multiple rounds permitting each player to be the thief and competing for the best heist. Alas, I was the first thief and was spotted on my 2nd turn, most unfortunately! I immediately ducked into a room which, Zoltar be praised, had an unlocked window, thus ending the shortest attempted art heist on record. Jeffles burglarized next, and spent a much longer time lurking about the museum, eventually getting 3 or 4 paintings, I believe, but we nabbed him, and he's now busting rocks in the state pen, thus illustrating that crime does not pay. PJ and Dan followed, each getting 2 paintings out successfully, thus illustrating that crime pays.

On my turn in the first Bluff game, I doubted the current bid of fives and called. Sadly, Whendy had 5 fives, and all 3 of Steve's dice were fives, and all 4 of Chad's dice were fives. Uh... boggle! I was off by 5 and knocked out fast!

Cribbgolf is some wacky hybrid of golf and cribbage. That's about all I know about it, except that it makes William howl!