[Icehouse] Re: New game: Shield Bashers. Needs playtesting.

[Eric Wald]

On 3/1/07, Chris Johnson wrote:
> > However, on first glance I notice that the Destroyers are color-bound.
> > This makes them worth somewhat less than the Frigates, which is slightly
> > unintuitive given the pip values.  More seriously, it makes draws
> > possible, if two people have opposite-colored Frigates.
>
> By traveling on the diagonal, they effectively travel twice as fast as
> the Frigates.  But I suppose that Frigates are faster, but Destroyers
> are more powerful...  Perhaps whenever two ships of the same colour are
> side-by-side they could swap places as a move.

Simply swapping places is a good idea, but not quite enough to solve the
problem of draws.  Allow Destroyers to attack a piece to the side, and
you have a complete system.  That also makes an interesting progression
of piece power, but could be slightly confusing.

> I may take a leaf from the Looney Labs book and completely re-write the
> victory conditions.  For example; the backstory I wrote talks about
> fighting over resources.  Perhaps a pile of pyramids could be placed in
> the center of the board and the winner is the first player to collect
> more than half.  Or one pyramid and the winner is the first to get it
> back to their corner.

The resources in the center is an interesting condition; I'd like to see
how it works out in practice.  Note that there would have to be an equal
pile in each of the four center squares.

- Eric