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Topic: Of mice and elephants: play report (Read 1365 times) |
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IdahoEv
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Of mice and elephants: play report
« on: Mar 20th, 2007, 12:22pm » |
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Purplebaron actually had some free time, as his fiancee is out of town. So he and I play-tested a couple of games with rodents.
The first two games were on a 9x9 board, played with the usual pieces +1 mouse +1 rabbit. The last game was on the stardard 8x8 board.
What we learned (Summary)
* The mouse is extremely powerful, especially in defense, despite being vulnerable to seven other pieces.
* The mouse makes for an interesting and brain-racking tactical game.
* There are strategic elements to the mouse as well (like forcing space between the opposing mouse and elephant), but it's not clear how deep they are
* With a mouse in play, the core tactical/attacking unit in the opening game seem s to be a 3-piece E-M-mouse "combined arms" squad: you CAN NOT attack with elephant alone.
* You can frame a mouse to good effect, but you can't do it with your elephant as part of the frame!
* The 9x9 board is too big with only 4 steps per turn: you can't reinforce quickly enough. Though in future games we might build up a structure supporting the two home traps before proceeding to the middle- this might be effective.
Game 1: 9x9 with mouse
The first game lasted three turns. I opened with my elephant to one side of the center trap. He immediately took it hostage with his mouse! He pulled it to the home row, keeping his mouse behind my elephant so I could not attack it with other officers. It turns out that a 9x9 board feels extremely big, and I simply could not get reinforcements to the other side of the board fast enough to free my elephant ... it was too far. With it clear that I was either going to lose my elephant or have it hostage the whole game, I resigned on 3w. We started over.
Game 2: 9x9 with mouse
The second game turned into an exciting protracted tactical struggle. We quickly discovered that elephant-mouse-<any other officer> is a ro-sham-bo combination and becomes the basic attacking/tactical unit of this variant. For about fifteen turns, we each had an EMO (Elephant caMel mOuse) squad in the center of the board, trying to maneuver so as to get our own mouse on the opposing elephant, elephant on the opposing camel, or camel on the opposing mouse. After a while, I managed to get this semi-hostage position against the left flank, pinning both his camel and elephant (showing a1 through e5):
Code:
eO..X
mEM.D
.RX..
R.C..
.RRRR
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He had to bring up a horse to attack my mouse, which quickly led to the trade of my mouse for BOTH of his horses. As it turns out, this was a good trade for him ... the mouse is an incredibly valuable piece. A bit later we traded my M for his DH, leaving him with the only camel and mouse, but me with both horses. I launched an EHD attack on his G7 trap, and his camel did not matter (much) because it was not near any of my horses. He parked it by my C3 trap and defended my attack with EO. It turns out this was extremely effective. With rabbits there to unfreeze his mouse, I absolutely could not manage to gain effective trap control: his mouse meant I could not commit my elephant fully. While I struggled to gain trap control, he worked a mouse up my b file, then switched his elephant from G7 trap to C3 trap and pushed the mouse through for goal.
The biggest thing we learned was that the 9x9 board is so big that you cannot call up reinforcements quickly if you are on the other side of the board. With five traps spaced far out, most of the traps were very sparsely controlled for most of the game.
Game 1: 8x8 with mouse
So we decided to see how the mouse combination worked on an 8x8 board. We played with the mouse replacing one cat in the standard piece set. We also allowed reversal of blunders because they were common with the new pieces. (Scott blundered his E to my O once)
Scott played gold. We had discussed that the EMO triad can actually be EM<any other officer> to achieve the same ro-sham-bo effect, so he decided to open with an ECO attack, supported by a dog, hopefully allowing his camel freedom on another wing. Interestingly, the fight quickly became a battle for control of the center rather than control of any trap. The first strategic goal we discovered is separating the opponent's elephant from his mouse. This allows you to attack or hostage the mouse more safely, and breaks up his core 3-piece fighting unit. As it turned out, his attack with ECO instead of EMO allowed me to do this, because my dogs and horses were able to threaten his cat. I kept my elephant and mouse on or near d3 and e3, and managed with threats to push his mouse to g4 and his elephant to c4, with several of my pieces and his cat blocking the center. From there, I developed a position with my mouse holding his phant, my phant near his camel, and my camel holding his mouse - passing it off to a cat so my camel could attack. He was able to recover from this better than you might think (mostly by using horses to kill my now exposed dogs and cats in the middle and attack my mouse). After a while we traded mice, bringing the game back to a legal Arimaa position. But by that point I'd accumulated a large material advantage and had no trouble forcing a win.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Of mice and elephants: play report
« Reply #1 on: Mar 20th, 2007, 5:55pm » |
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If the mouse is worth more than you expected, and affects the game too much, would you consider making it smaller than a rabbit, and unable to score goal?
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IdahoEv
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Re: Of mice and elephants: play report
« Reply #2 on: Mar 21st, 2007, 1:37am » |
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The mouse is definitely unable to score a goal. Our next playtest probably will try it smaller than a rabbit. (which would make it equivalent to my very first definition.)
Incidentally, it didn't just make the mouse a powerful piece; it also increased the relative value of the camel. We found that you pretty much wanted to include the camel in your attack: it could affect almost as many pieces as the elephant, but didn't have to worry about the mouse. The elephant was still the most powerful piece, but it was now one of an essential trio that worked together.
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