[Icehouse] new questions asked by Brian

[Brian Campbell]

Thanks Jake and Josh for the advice!

On Jan 22, 2007, at 3:08 PM, Joshua Kronengold wrote:

> 2. Use the prisoner to tail-block attackers -- either by attacking one
>    of your one-point pieces (ie a sacrifice), or by attacking an
>    opponent.  While this does involve losing a point, the sacrifice is
>    particularly notable, since by its nature, it lays out a trap that
>    unaware opponents can fall into -- as continued attempts to
>    attack that area will often hand you free prisoners.

I'm having a hard time picturing this trap. Is it that an opponent  
will attack your original defender (the one you tail-blocked the  
attack on), then you can over-ice the small (with another prisoner),  
take back the first prisoner, and now your original defender will be  
over iced so you can capture one of the pieces attacking it, and  
finally return the original prisoner to attacking your small,  
squandering the original attacker again, and finally take back the  
prisoner you used to over-ice your small?

This seems like a rather complicated trap, so it would be vulnerable  
to interference, that also requires you to have another prisoner, but  
would be really cool to pull off if you could do it.

This is why I'd like to see Icehouse strategy discussed via the  
GooTubes. It's pretty hard to describe and visualize these sorts of  
things via email, or even using the photocopier notation system like  
the example game, but it would be pretty simple to see what's going  
on in a video.