2004-06-30 RussCon Report

News

18 of us played 21 games! A few unexpected old faces, hurray: ChrisH, Dan, Steve! (Sorry I didn't get to play a game with Chris and Dan.)

I'm leaving for a 5-week vacation, and I'll try to update my blog with news from the trip for those interested in seeing where I am and what's going on. (Hint: Esperanto and go are both involved.) Fear not, Wednesday night gaming will continue at my house, hosted by Clayton, who is moving in. Same bat time, same bat place. Although no one will be running stats while I'm gone, feel free to record game results in The Book for posterity and I'll enter them when I get back - still fun for the yearly summaries and seeing what games are most popular and all that jazz. If anyone wants to write session reports, go for it, and I'll update this site with them after I return. Meanwhile, enjoy SansRussCon or ClaytonCon or whatever!

Great Hall Games has moved to 5501 North Lamar (a block south of Koenig)! Their new gaming area is much bigger than the old one.

Game Results

Crokinole	2	Marty 1 MikeC -1
VeryCleverPipeGame	2	RussW 1 MarkY -1
Tutanchamun	4	JP 3 Clayton 1 Whendy -1 Marty -3
Crokinole	4	ChrisH 3 James 1 Tim -1 Fina -3
RicochetRobot	5	MarkY 4 RussW 2 Marty 0 Steve -2 MikeC -4
SanJuan	4	MarkY 3 RussW 1 Steve -1 MikeC -3
Tichu	2	( JimG MarkH ) 1 ( Ben Dan ) -1
RicochetRobot	3	Ben 1 JP 1 Dan -2
TicketToRide	4	Clayton 3 JimG 1 MarkH -1 Fina -3
Crokinole	2	Ben 1 Steve -1
EinfachGenial	3	William 2 RussW 0 MarkY -2
Exxtra	4	Clayton 3 Ben 1 Steve -1 JimG -3
Torres	4	Marty 3 ChrisH 1 Whendy -1 Tim -3
Crokinole	2	Tim 1 Whendy -1
Amun-Re	3	Matt 2 JP 0 MikeC -2
EinfachGenial	3	William 2 MarkY 0 RussW -2
Crokinole	2	JimG 1 Tim -1
EinfachGenial	3	Marty 2 Steve 0 Whendy -2
SanJuan	3	RussW 2 MarkY 0 Clayton -2
TakeItEasy	4	Matt 3 William 1 JP -1 MikeC -3
CarcassonneCastle	2	Steve 1 RussW -1

Got my revenge in Very Clever Pipe Game, then MarkY came from behind in Ricochet Robot...

Fun to play Einfach Genial again, even though I sucked at it.

The San Juan games are often quite close. In the last one, MarkY had 29 points and I had 25, for last place, until we realized I had 5 cards in my chapel, moving me to first, heh.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:     
 2.6027 William
 2.4849 Matt
 2.0794 Clayton
 1.7918 Marty
 1.7918 ChrisH
 1.3863 JP
 1.2040 MarkY
 1.0986 RussW
 0.8109 Ben
 0.4055 JimG
 0.4055 James
 0.2877 MarkH
-1.5042 Steve
-1.7916 Tim
-1.7916 Dan
-2.6023 Whendy
-2.7726 Fina
-6.1658 MikeC

Win Ratings:
 2.6672 Marty won 3 of 5
 2.4849 Matt won 2 of 2
 2.0794 Clayton won 2 of 4
 1.9095 William won 2 of 3
 1.0986 ChrisH won 1 of 2
 1.0986 JP won 2 of 4
 1.0862 MarkY won 2 of 6
 0.8109 JimG won 2 of 4
 0.4055 MarkH won 1 of 2
 0.1178 Ben won 2 of 4
-0.2231 RussW won 2 of 7
-0.2877 James won 0 of 1
-0.5754 Tim won 1 of 4
-0.5754 Fina won 0 of 2
-1.2040 Steve won 1 of 6
-1.6740 Whendy won 0 of 4
-1.7916 Dan won 0 of 2
-1.8971 MikeC won 0 of 5

Matt, Marty, and William are Co-Devils! Clayton is Vice-Devil. Then ChrisH, then JP, then MarkY. MikeC is the Generous Angel!

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

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

I was the Meta Devil and designed the following Meta Game:

Meta game - my final boardgaming for 5 weeks

I'm leaving town till August, and I'll miss 5 RussCons! Unprecedented! I'm sure I'll start jonesing for boardgames, so I want to play some of my current favorites during my final RussCon before my voyage...

Earn a meta point each time you play any of these games that I've enjoyed a lot lately, and earn an extra meta point if I'm in the game!

Ricochet Robot
Einfach Genial
San Juan
Ticket To Ride
The Very Clever Pipe Game
La Strada

Ok, La Strada isn't a favorite because I haven't actually played it yet, but it looks really cool, so earn 5 meta points if you bring it so we can try it out! And I put Very Clever Pipe Game on the list partly just to be nice to MarkY, of course.

Each meta point is a ticket in the lottery which will randomly decide the next Meta Devil.

Well no one brought La Strada, which was too bad (though kudos to MikeC for looking for it; Dragon's Lair didn't have it in stock, and he didn't know where Great Hall had moved to, which was too bad since Great Hall does have it in stock. Their new location is on Lamar, a block south of Koenig.) I got to play all the other games on the list except Ticket To Ride, which is perhaps just as well since I seem incapable of doing better than last place in it. In all, there were 9 games played which earned a meta point, and 6 of them had me in them, thus earning 2 meta points. I reckoned the points earned as follows:

2 (Very Clever Pipe Game): MarkY RussW
2 (Ricochet Robot): MarkY Marty MikeC RussW Steve
2 (San Juan): MarkY MikeC RussW Steve
1 (Ricochet Robot): Ben Dan JP
1 (Ticket To Ride): Clayton Fina JimG MarkH
2 (Einfach Genial): MarkY RussW William
2 (Einfach Genial): MarkY RussW William
1 (Einfach Genial): Marty Steve Whendy
2 (San Juan): Clayton MarkY RussW

50 lottery tickets were thus generated. They were distributed as follows:

12: MarkY RussW
5: Steve
4: MikeC William
3: Clayton Marty
1: Ben Dan Fina JimG JP MarkH Whendy

The winning lottery ticket was JP's, so JP is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Gym Class movie - keep watching if you think it starts off slow

Office Space Wars

Ludemetic Game Generator reminds me of the The Big Idea from Cheapass: "It's like a World War II Trivia game... that has Action/Dexterity Farming!"

Make your own Pirate Radio Station with an iPod

Brad Sucks got an Electric Kazoo and fiddles around with it. I recommend checking out the real songs at that site as well.

pitchformula.com - music criticism as a creative tool

The Coulter Challenge

The 6-U Initiative "The Hour of Liberation from clumsy URL specs is at hand!"

Ribbon Campaigns "The most comprehensive ribbon list on the 'Net"

'boards has some cute video shorts: Online Jam has fun music from all over the world, Get Yourself High is a kung-fu Chemical Brothers video, Fantastic by Mellow has cool art/animation, and Pourquoi - Passque is a little slow but amusingly odd, as is The Pleasant Barber.

The Reality of Running Away from Stuff (in movies)

Gender in English nouns by Washington Post readers