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        Arimaa >> Off Topic Discussion >> The camel piece
        
(Message started by: NIC1138 on Apr 3rd, 2006, 10:24pm)
Title: The camel piece
Post by NIC1138 on Apr 3rd, 2006, 10:24pm
Arimaa's camel stone refers to the Bactrian Camel, with two humps, or the dromedary, with a single hump??  ???    8)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 4th, 2006, 12:25am
I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig?  For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by NIC1138 on Apr 4th, 2006, 2:44am
Yes!!! I tought it was a pig too!!! :D

Now, what about the elephant? Is it an african or indian elephant?  I suppose the gray african elephant would be the silver one, and the brownish asian would be the golden one...   8)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by RonWeasley on Apr 4th, 2006, 7:59am
My brother Fred once turned my horse into a frog.  It got pushed around a lot but it could jump over cats.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by Arimanator on Apr 4th, 2006, 2:55pm

on 04/04/06 at 00:25:08, Fritzlein wrote:
I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig?  For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa.

Given that the symbolism's point was to give the players an intuitive knowledge of the relative strengths of the pieces and that a pig is obviously stronger than a cat and weaker than a horse of normal size then I don't see a problem in calling it a pig. ;)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 4th, 2006, 5:47pm
I'm trying to remember the endgame where all the heavy pieces were off, and I kept my cats back on defense while my dogs went forward to create goal threats.  At one point I suddenly realized I had "pigs" on the 7th rank.  ("pigs on the 7th" is what you call it in chess when you have both of your rooks on your 7th rank.   Usually that's good for at least a draw by perpetual check if not an outright mate.)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by omar on Apr 9th, 2006, 8:02am

on 04/03/06 at 22:24:46, NIC1138 wrote:
Arimaa's camel stone refers to the Bactrian Camel, with two humps, or the dromedary, with a single hump??  ???    8)


Looks to me more like the single hump Dromedary camel :-)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by omar on Apr 9th, 2006, 8:11am

on 04/04/06 at 00:25:08, Fritzlein wrote:
I don't know, but have you ever noticed that the Arimaa dog looks an awful lot like a pig?  For my first couple-dozen games I had to keep reminding myself that there are no pigs in Arimaa.


You should have seen the first version of the cat; I can't seem to find that image anymore, but it looked a lot like a pig. The current version of the dog is supposed to look like a german shephard.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by PMertens on Apr 9th, 2006, 5:20pm
oh I thought it was more like a dogo argentino or something (with shortened ears)

Don't shepperds have longer ears ?
Also a dogo would be more useful in battle ;-)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by IdahoEv on Apr 12th, 2006, 1:31pm
I always thought a Rhinocerous would be better than a camel.   It's more obviously intermediate in size between a horse and a phant, especially to American idiots like me who don't really know what a camel looks like.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 12th, 2006, 4:53pm

on 04/12/06 at 13:31:13, IdahoEv wrote:
I always thought a Rhinocerous would be better than a camel.

That's funny.  I did once see a nature documentary where a rogue elephant was slaughtering innocent rhinos.  Yet my first thought was that the second piece should be a lion rather than a camel.

A while back, I was going to suggest that a lion would be a more sensible second-strongest piece than a camel, and cooler for promoting the game, but I got to thinking:  While a lion certainly can't take down an elephant, conversely an elephant could never catch a lion, so between those two animals it is sort of stalemated.

Since then, I have come to the conclusion that the problem is there are vegetarians for the top three pieces.  For the most comprehensible hierarchy, every piece should be able to eat the next lower piece for dinner.  How about Lion > Wolf > Dog > Cat > Rabbit > Grass?
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by 99of9 on Apr 12th, 2006, 5:08pm
You want to play a game where the objective is to get some grass to the other side of the field?
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by PMertens on Apr 12th, 2006, 5:42pm
rofl  ;D
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by IdahoEv on Apr 12th, 2006, 7:33pm
You might not care about winning anymore after you capture too much of the opponent's grass.

"We're all brothers, man ... i think we both win!"
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by NIC1138 on Apr 13th, 2006, 2:06pm
The question about lions and rhinos takes us to the other questioning:  Is it an african elephant or an indian elephant? What exactly is the geographic context of arimaa, Iran/msopotamia/arabia? Or perhaps the whole region from north Africa to north India?... With that decided, we can then chose the cat and dog species more carefully... :)

We could also take out the dog, and make it cat, hawk and rabbit, since the hawk is a very traditional animal in the arab world!... Also, the killer instinct is stronger in cats against birds and hawks against rabbits, than in dogs against cats and cats against rabbits!!..  8)
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by IdahoEv on Apr 13th, 2006, 10:10pm

on 04/13/06 at 14:06:04, NIC1138 wrote:
the killer instinct is stronger in cats against birds and hawks against rabbits, than in dogs against cats and cats against rabbits!!..  8)


Given that my pet dog corners cats but then tries to copulate with them, I tend to concur with your statement about the killer instincts of dogs.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by BlackKnight on Apr 13th, 2006, 11:42pm

on 04/12/06 at 17:08:28, 99of9 wrote:
You want to play a game where the objective is to get some grass to the other side of the field?

"The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill (or fence)!"
I think that clearly states the objective of the game! ;-)

Does the hawk mean Arimaa needs to go into a third dimension? ;-) Can the hawk fly over the trap and/or other pieces?
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by BlackKnight on Apr 14th, 2006, 1:33am
Sorry, I forgot to mention kangaroo and Trojan horse in my last posting! :D

And this reminds me of the following (or maybe the other way round): I have a chess set where you can stack any pieces on top of each other, and this kind of chess also has its own rules: You can stack arbitrarily, but if your opponent captures this stack, then all the pieces are gone!
The stack moves like the topmost piece - only! When the stack moves, it can leave a lower part of the stack on the starting square. Promoting a pawn can be speeded up quite a bit, especially on a half-open file with a rook behind: 1. The rook hops on top of the pawn. 2. The "rook"-stack moves to the opposite rank. 3. The rook moves away leaving the pawn behind to be promoted.

I don't know whether this game was really successful but it was quite fun to play, and of course you can use this chess set also for normal play.
Title: Re: The camel piece
Post by NIC1138 on Apr 23rd, 2006, 10:54pm
I know a similar game, created by a famous chess dude called something-something Lasker. But The version I know is more like checkers...


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