Відео

Very interesting game

I built a board and play tested a bit yesterday. I think this game has great potential, I like it a lot. While testing we made some variations to the rules and I thought I'd share. Starting we play with one piece less and you aren't allowed to move into your own fort, else there is rarely, if ever, a reason to leave it. Banner movement was too powerful so we constrained it to only the starting squares. We roll two dice and choose one as banner position for your opponents move. I still feel banner is a bit too powerful. We modified the combat a bit as well. We mostly tried playing where you need to move into a piece to interact with it. Will need to test the original rules a bit more on this I think. Moving in point first to side or back will kill the other piece and vice verca. Moving in side or back to other pieces side or back will push up to one piece in your move direction, friendly fire is on. Point to point we rolled a dice each, looser dies, on doubles both die. Looking at this vid again I really like the elegance of being able to push someone to the side. Will do some more testing trying to incorporate that.

The game looks great, but you need to get better at explaining it. 20 minute video, and still a lot of questions of how the game works

rule questions regarding the clash 1. what if you can't move the other player - sorry didn't finish 2. what if by moving the other player it will be in a stabbing position from one of my stones 3. what if by moving the other player it will be stabbing one of my stones 4. what if by moving the other player it will be in a clash position with one of my stones. To me the clash push has still a lot of edge cases. other than that it sounds like a nice game

4:04 - 90°

Maybe if you roll a 6 you can choose and if you roll a 1 it stays in the same place. Otherwise it will be more numbers for the diagonal move of the banner.

what a really nice game and it having a healthy amount of randomness makes it more enjoable

the banner should always be rolled on the 2nd player side. 1-2 first square 3-4 second square and 5-6 third square. it's already an davantage to start taking space and placing fighters in the middle make them more likely to be active as well. having the banner closer to you at the beggining is too much of an additional advantage. the second player not only have a move laye but he already have less choice both to move his fighters but also always have to fight black against you bringing the banner further to your side if the banner start on the 3 dark side square and both players try to bring it to their side it will remain in the middle which is fait and you have to force your opponent to make a move that is not toward him to lose the advantage. also randomising where you move the banner is weird for this kind of game especially if this is such a central mechanic. you might play in order to give your adversary 50% chance of being forced to give you the advantage. random at the start is ok. random every turn is weird. maybe the banner could only be reset to the if it touch the border or when a soldier dies. so that the random aspect is less sistematic and used to reduce snowball( even then it could be place in the center based on where it left) in your current version odd is better at reducing oppenent choices which is not a good design either, if you only roll odd you create an advantage just based on luck. all those problems make possible for the second player to only have 2 fighter to move if first player rolls a 2/4/6 into an odd number, that's 1/4 of the times a huge advantage for the first player and a very frustrating start where 2nd is already at disadvantage but also doesn't have many choices

Some really interesting ideas. How much have you play tested it?

I like the basic idea of this game but there are a few things that I would consider, why would I ever choose to move my sword out of my own fortress? That leaves me in jeopardy. In this game, I'm never really able to set up my next move because someone is always going to move the banner into the least optimal place for me so I'm always left attempting to play two random moves ahead, I'm not in love with that. Lastly, it seems like the real game here is squash enough of your opponents and steal the flag so they can't move. Unless I'm mistaken, it would be very easy to never lose because of the fortress, and only lose because of the banner.

Looks interesting, but there are a couple situations you didn't address, for example: -What if you move, and have an enemy poiting to the side of the piece you moved? -What if you push an enemy into a position where is pointed to it's side? -What of you push it and it point to the side of one of yours? I guess you can go a bit deeper into the rules, and it will be a pretty interesting game!

I worry about the banner being moved at the end of turn 1. There seems to be about a 1/12 chance (or more) that the first player can win immediately by rolling a 4, and then an odd number to move the banner diagonally towards their side, leaving the opponent with no valid moves. EDIT: Ah, thanks to zachary I checked again, and it is a 1/12 chance to give your opponent only 1 possible piece they can move. Still, that seems a bit too strong and restrictive, and compounds the first-player advantage.

Pushing seems to be the soul of this interesting little game, and having these situations be ambiguous is a severe problem.

You never discussed what happens if a player moves their own piece such that an enemy is now pointing sword at the side of the piece just moved. Do you lose the piece instantly, or can you use a second action to then move further or rotate? Also, what happens when you push an enemy piece and their new location has a sword pointed at another piece? Many options there.... if I push them so that my own sword is pointed at their piece, it makes sense they lose the piece. But what if the push places their piece now sword pointed at one of my pieces? Do I lose my piece? What if I push their piece and we now have ANOTHER sword point to sword point situation? Do I push them again, do they push me? What happens when a sword is pointed at the handle of an enemy sword? It seems unlikely you would ever prefer to turn around, but at the end of your "dark plays poorly" example game, if dark has a piece close enough to attack the light piece at the gate of the fortress, it would make sense to advance even from behind and rotate to point back toward your own fortress. Or can pieces only ever point forward?

Hi, this feels like the result of "what amount of twists is needed so I can play checkers with dice?". Your starting layout is checkers with the 3rd rows of pieces removed, arrows painted on the remaining pieces, the token played on the inner (B7:G2) white squares and a regular die added, at least.

OMG! I have made an abstract game with the same goal of invading the enemy's "fortress". I would love, if it is possible, to send you a video or something like that so you could give me your opinion! You made me ennter all this "abstract game" fandom somehow hahahah.

Very interesting design, nicely done! I personally like the dice mechanic. I am interesting to know if you testing the game with the chess capture mechanic of having to move into the space to capture and if you did how that affected the game for better or worse? It feels like it would be a more intuitive rule, but hard to know how’d it’d change the game without trying it myself

I have no problem with abstract strategy games that use dice. Backgammon's a great game and I'd say the randomness of that game ADDS depth. However, if I could think of a ruleset that removes the die (though it likely has severe balancing issues), then I'd make it so the second player decides where to first place the banner. Then the players would alternate between moving orthogonally and diagonally, so the second player would always have a bit of an advantage despite the turn deficit.

Looks fun!

you can also play this using the diagonals of a chess board

Very interesting game. The rules sound simple.

War Chest is the top abstract game 100%

I love this game. With your permission ima make a version for myself and play around with it :)

when you showed the moves at 6:30 I realized how elegant these rules are! nice!

Hello! I´m an illustrator and boardgame designer, and i´m working on a graphic take of shogi pieces. I would really apreciate if you could take a look, and tell me what do you think.

Thanks for including timestamps.

Great list. Love Tak, but I personally believe Go is better. Shobu is also quite an amazing game.

Shogi isn’t an abstract game, and xiangqi is better anyway.

The king-needs-to-be-surrounded-on-four-sides rule for Hnefatafl is entirely based on a pretty bad mistranslation. In the only set of rules for a tafl-game we have the king is captured from two sides, as you play it, except for when he is on the center square (where he is captured from four) or next to it (where he is captured from 3, the center square itself being the "fourth" side). The mistranslated in question basically just left out the "when he is on the center square" part. In these rules the king also only need to get to the edge, not the corner squares. (The corner square rule was based purely on the fact the the corners are decorated on some historical boards, and as a way to balance the game more by people working from the translation that had the error mentioned above.) Even with that, as long as you capture the king from two-sides, the consensus seems to be that if anything the game very, very slightly favors the attacking side.

I've uploaded a crude version of this to the Tabletop Simulator Steam Workshop so I can play with others online

Thanks for this! I love abstract strategy and haven't heard of a few of these, so I am excited to check them out! I would also recommend "Dosh" (not doshgolf, but DōSH)... it's a new one out there and it is one of the best I've ever played. Truly fun, original and deep with a touch of luck. I know you would love it. I got mine at the game crafter but maybe you can find it elsewhere. Thanks again!

There's a Brazilian game called trench. Check that out.

One reason I don’t like shogi as much as international chess is that the drops disrupt the feeling of a military strategy game. I will say I think shogi and xiangqi are both prettier than chess with the minimalist presentation, although I never thought it made much sense to learn either one deeply as a westerner.

This game looks fun, I hope to be able to find someone to try it out with. Though I do have a question. How often, with more than a year of this video being out, have people found that promotion is worth the turn? Because, if "serving" isn't a huge advantage, I could see that the first turn being a promotion could become a standard first move. At that point it might be worth thinking about giving the "receiving" team a free promotion. I would love to hear thoughts from not only your playtest but from a year of this being in the "wild."

Abstracts being "boring" and "dry" falls flat with me. Hobby board games often go overboard with theme, either to the point where the gameplay completely lets the theme down, or the theme is just a cringy coat of paint that feels like pandering. Abstracts drop the veneer and expose the purity of gameplay and design underneath. There is a reason Go is described as beautiful. Perfection is achieved when there is nothing more to take away.

Hi, would be nice to see your metal Tak set in action. Also: The Summer Beginner Tournament is starting in a few days, signup is open till 14th of June if I remember correctly.

can you recommend any abstract strategy games that can be played by more then two ppl?

…Despite never playing any of these games, I agree with almost everything you said. I’m kinda surprised that abalone and Arimaa is not here tho, but I still think you deserve a sub.

You forget the pits and peebles "Mancala" typ games as Bao and Oware.

Neat concept. I wonder if you thought of increasing the score thats required to win and making the goal have varied points. E.g the middle two within the goal could score higher and each successive outer layer would score a little less(3,2,and 1)? Love the name and inspiration of the game. I'm currently working on a game called Olmecas😊

In the middle of watching right now and loving it. Many games here i have not tried yet. On pause with a phone call but feel compelled to say you should try Zertz; 4 ways to win, two ways to capture, timed end game with diminishing board. Brilliant game. Kris Burm is a genius.

one could trap the ball in a corner with 2 tokens (pieces) and move the third around without the opponent ever getting to the ball,is that legal?Or is it a draw?Could you comment please, thx.

Why is the field narrower towards the bottom? What I mean is you have one row towards the bottom of the screen with only 5 hexes on it whereas every other row has 6 or 7 hexes. Why the asymmetry?

Chinese Xiangqi has a similar problem to Shogi, the characters being represented with similar looking Kanji tiles. (To some other people, of course. I took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge) not only that, but then the 'same' pieces on opposing sides can also be different! With the 'king' on black side being 將 or 将 (The General) and the red has 帥 or 帅 (The Marshall) other pieces are also different characters too, the elephant 象 for black and the minister 相 for red (Despite being the identical pieces, interestingly this is also because in Mandarin both elephant and Minister are pronounced "xiàng" sounding similar. Considering that all pieces are usually in a set of identical sizes just adds to the confusion. One of these days I may get around to making a western-friendly set. I'm sure I could come up with better designs for Soldier, Advisor, Elephant, Horse (or knight) Cannon and Chariot. Loved the video, by the way. we've already tried Hens & Chicks, and enjoyed that. Trike's 'board' looks like it is made from poker chips?

You could have chosen a Quetzal instead of an Eagle.The Quetzal is probably more synonymous to Mayan culture than an eagle, nevertheless great game.

Had a lot to say but reading the other comments I now realize there is little point. I'll just say that this is a list of your own personal favorites, and clearly not a list of the ten greatest abstracts of all time A list of the top ten abstract strategy games of all time by more objective standards: the games are chosen for longevity, cultural significance, the existence of a large player base, the existence of a literature. In some cases, very closely related games are listed together. Chess Go Shogi Xiang Qi Checkers/Draughts Reversi/Othello GoMoku/Pente/Renju Mancala/Wari Fanorona Abalone

Fascinating. Thank you for this. I hope you will show us the other 5 games in the series too. Can't wait.

Why is no one talking about Cavendish?!

Shogi!! Love that it made this list!!

TZAAR is my favorite of the whole project. Shobu is so good once you realize the roles your two groups separated by the rope must fill. I also have Tak but don't get to play as much as I should...