[Icehouse] Shotgunning

[Jacob Davenport]

Timothy Hunt wrote:
> I'm also not sure *how* Jake Davenport came up with the shotgunning
> strategy, and I would love to know how it came about.
OK.  I came up with it after playing the snowball strategy in 1994 and 
being unsatisfied with it.  Really, the strength of the game is 
overicing, and I don't know if John just added that rule to stop people 
from just attacking one piece over and over, but it has this really cool 
consequence.

I played around with the game on my own and figured out I could use 
overicing, as long as I had a large prisoner, to make all my pieces 
safe.  I have two talents that make Icehouse easier for me, namely very 
good spacial relationship ability, and quick decision making.  I like to 
restructure attacks, and do it quickly.

But I could only do this if I had enough space around my defenders, so I 
didn't want them in the snowball.  I assumed that other players would 
imitate this, and thus my attackers were at risk, but not my defenders, 
so I made three strategy decisions.  One, don't attack anything, two, 
get a prisoner, and three, don't snowball.  I played this strategy in 
1996.  In the first few games, people traded prisoners with me and I was 
able to get near-perfect scores, wasting lots of people's attackers.  
People were used to a prisoner just making one attack restructured, but 
not all of them.  As such, in later games, people were afraid to attack 
me at all.

In 1998, I realized that nobody will give me a prisoner, so I went on a 
rampage to put someone in the Icehouse, which is a hard way to get 
prisoners.  My favorite game of all time was the one where I put all 
four players, including myself, into the Icehouse.  Whee!

When I teach people how to play better, which seems to happen every year 
I'm at Origins, I suggest this exercise.  First, play eight yellow 
defenders  (four medium and four large) scattered with about four inches 
between them.  Then take a stash of red pieces and quickly ice them 
all.  Ice them without crashing, with the tips nice and close, and 
minimally (no extra attacker points, you should have a medium left 
over).  This practices moving fast and precisely on an attack, a skill 
that is always valuable.  Then take exactly one large green piece and 
use it to restructure all the attacks, ending with the green piece 
successful.  This practices restructuring attacks, and assumes that the 
green player gave you the prisoner on the agreement that you'd not 
squander it.

Now, how to restructure all those attacks is the fun part.  I already 
knew about the 2-for-1 exchange, the ice trap, tip blocking, and the 
forced retreat.  I use all of these in combination.  Regularly I force 
retreats so that the retreater tip blocks a previous retreater, which 
sets up a nice ice trap.  Retreat the right pieces in the right way, and 
you can do a 2-for-1 exchange or even better.  If you have two large 
defenders near each other, both iced, you may be able to point all four 
of the attackers with their attacking lines intersecting at one point, 
and then just pop one of your small pieces in front of all of them, 
collecting the three new prisoners in a 4-for-1 deal.

Speaking of which, because of the 2-for-1 exchange, I don't play my 
small pieces down as defenders until near the end, because they are so 
important for the 2-for-1 deal.  My initial defenders, as in the 
practice session above, are all mediums and larges.  This is another 
reason to avoid the snowball: people tend to put their small pieces into 
the snowball, and I would rather save them.  Yeah, if you set up a 
fortress, I might pop mine inside it, but usually it will pay better on 
the outside.

Of course, the 2-for-1 deal only works if done quickly, because somebody 
will try to pop their own small piece in front and pick up the 
prisoners.  The best way to do it is to have attackers of several 
colors.  If I'm doing a 2-for-1 with two large pieces, one red and one 
green, neither the red nor green player will benefit from putting a 
small in front of those two pieces.  I just need to be faster than the 
blue player.

So all of my restructuring ideas came from extending the strategies I 
already knew about and practicing them.  Icehouse is not as deep as 
chess, and I'd be surprised if anyone found strategies at this point 
that were previously unknown.  But that would be fun if it happened.

Questions?