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Tabletop Game - Go ...
bluefoxicy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I looked in the Games section and immediately assumed nobody wants to discuss Chess or a good game of Stratego there, given the crowd and the obvious topics of discussion. Perhaps this judgment was in error; however I find that having something moved into context from a loose-context forum is less annoying to moderators and denizens alike than having to move something off-topic out of an inappropriate context and into the fast-and-loose discussion corner.
That being said, I'm taking a step back in the Games section. Very back. I'm not talking Gabe stepping back to Dungeons & Dragons; let me take you back ... Shanghai, 2200 BC.
The game was called Weiqi (pronounced Way-Chi), and still is in China. It is now also called Baduk in Korea, where there are more schools teaching Baduk than... well... anything else, really; and in Japan and the rest of the world, it is known as Go.
I could say a lot about Go. I could touch philosophy, complexity of the game, skills the game teaches. I could argue that Go is fundamentally superior to Chess in the same way that Chess is fundamentally superior to Checkers, if you want to accept the argument that Chess is fundamentally superior to Checkers. There is in fact a lot I could say.
Instead I'll say this: If you like abstract strategy, you need to play Go. It is that simple.
As for the rules, I'll cover them as briefly as I can.
A game of Go starts with an empty 19x19 grid. Fast games start on 13x13 or 9x9, but these games don't progress in the same way. In any case, black plays first; white plays second. Each player alternates placing a stone on the intersections of the grid lines.
A group of adjacent stones of the same color form a "group," functioning as a single unit. Stones are adjacent immediately left, right, forward, and backward; they are not (solidly) connected diagonally. Each empty space around a group of stones (a single stone or a connected set) is called a "liberty." If a stone placed reduces the liberties of a group to 0, that group is immediately captured. Suicide is not allowed (playing to terminate your last liberty), and captures happen first (if you close your last liberty but also capture a group, you can play that and make the capture; your group isn't captured).
Finally, the Ko rule specifies that you cannot return the board to its immediate prior position during the last ply. If your opponent captures a single stone but places the capturing stone in Atari, you cannot capture that stone; you must play elsewhere, in an attempt to force a response from your player (i.e. play a Ko Threat) so that you can recapture the played Ko. Often, these Ko Fights center around a single connection that, if made or blocked, will significantly affect territory; therefor Ko threats are made which restrict or threaten capture of other stones. Settling the Ko early is often as costly as losing the Ko.
The final object of Go is to control territory. Borders are solidified in the endgame. Once solid, opponent stones are determined to be alive or dead; unsettled stones require further play to reach a live/dead state. If the stones cannot be captured, they are alive and borders around them must be made, else they can encroach and reduce territory; if they cannot prevent capture, they are dead. Dead stones are automatically captured in the end game. The number of open spaces inside your territory plus the number of stones you've captured makes your score.
Go is an easy game to learn, but difficult to learn to play well. Computers really suck at it, too; after 3 months I could beat supercomputers just by self-teaching, a feat any 5 year old can accomplish despite Go being a major topic of AI research. Study i.e. by reading Janice Kim's books or checking out the books listed in Sensei's Library or on David Carlton's page really improves your game; but it remains difficult to beat 17th Kyu players until you've had playing time and done some Joseki and Life and Death study.
Most of the point of this is, admittedly, that I play on the IGS and most of the players are well above my skill level. Playing with 9 handicap stones (All 9 star points, including the corners, the sides, and the Tengen) is... eh. Who am I kidding? The 4 kyu still whoop me. Theoretically I could beat an 8 kyu 50% of the time with 9 handicap stones. But if you're interested, nab qGo or gGo and get on.
(What? You expected something unbiased? Hey, I try to put up something genuinely interesting; I have no obligation to not be a fanboy.)
By the way, Atari and Tengen are Go terms. "Atari" is the state where a group has exactly 1 liberty (unless it escapes, the next play kills); "Tengen" is the center point (10,10) on the board.
That being said, I'm taking a step back in the Games section. Very back. I'm not talking Gabe stepping back to Dungeons & Dragons; let me take you back ... Shanghai, 2200 BC.
The game was called Weiqi (pronounced Way-Chi), and still is in China. It is now also called Baduk in Korea, where there are more schools teaching Baduk than... well... anything else, really; and in Japan and the rest of the world, it is known as Go.
I could say a lot about Go. I could touch philosophy, complexity of the game, skills the game teaches. I could argue that Go is fundamentally superior to Chess in the same way that Chess is fundamentally superior to Checkers, if you want to accept the argument that Chess is fundamentally superior to Checkers. There is in fact a lot I could say.
Instead I'll say this: If you like abstract strategy, you need to play Go. It is that simple.
As for the rules, I'll cover them as briefly as I can.
A game of Go starts with an empty 19x19 grid. Fast games start on 13x13 or 9x9, but these games don't progress in the same way. In any case, black plays first; white plays second. Each player alternates placing a stone on the intersections of the grid lines.
A group of adjacent stones of the same color form a "group," functioning as a single unit. Stones are adjacent immediately left, right, forward, and backward; they are not (solidly) connected diagonally. Each empty space around a group of stones (a single stone or a connected set) is called a "liberty." If a stone placed reduces the liberties of a group to 0, that group is immediately captured. Suicide is not allowed (playing to terminate your last liberty), and captures happen first (if you close your last liberty but also capture a group, you can play that and make the capture; your group isn't captured).
Finally, the Ko rule specifies that you cannot return the board to its immediate prior position during the last ply. If your opponent captures a single stone but places the capturing stone in Atari, you cannot capture that stone; you must play elsewhere, in an attempt to force a response from your player (i.e. play a Ko Threat) so that you can recapture the played Ko. Often, these Ko Fights center around a single connection that, if made or blocked, will significantly affect territory; therefor Ko threats are made which restrict or threaten capture of other stones. Settling the Ko early is often as costly as losing the Ko.
The final object of Go is to control territory. Borders are solidified in the endgame. Once solid, opponent stones are determined to be alive or dead; unsettled stones require further play to reach a live/dead state. If the stones cannot be captured, they are alive and borders around them must be made, else they can encroach and reduce territory; if they cannot prevent capture, they are dead. Dead stones are automatically captured in the end game. The number of open spaces inside your territory plus the number of stones you've captured makes your score.
Go is an easy game to learn, but difficult to learn to play well. Computers really suck at it, too; after 3 months I could beat supercomputers just by self-teaching, a feat any 5 year old can accomplish despite Go being a major topic of AI research. Study i.e. by reading Janice Kim's books or checking out the books listed in Sensei's Library or on David Carlton's page really improves your game; but it remains difficult to beat 17th Kyu players until you've had playing time and done some Joseki and Life and Death study.
Most of the point of this is, admittedly, that I play on the IGS and most of the players are well above my skill level. Playing with 9 handicap stones (All 9 star points, including the corners, the sides, and the Tengen) is... eh. Who am I kidding? The 4 kyu still whoop me. Theoretically I could beat an 8 kyu 50% of the time with 9 handicap stones. But if you're interested, nab qGo or gGo and get on.
(What? You expected something unbiased? Hey, I try to put up something genuinely interesting; I have no obligation to not be a fanboy.)
By the way, Atari and Tengen are Go terms. "Atari" is the state where a group has exactly 1 liberty (unless it escapes, the next play kills); "Tengen" is the center point (10,10) on the board.
People call me Wood Man, 'cause I always got wood.
bluefoxicy on
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no wait a turtle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIO4Uw36-JE
and then a bird flying overhead dropping a load on it
First published by Ideal in 1963 for two or more players, players at first cooperate to build a working Rube Goldberg-like mouse trap. But once the mouse trap is finished, the object is to then use the machine to trap all of one's opponent's mouse-shaped game pieces.
Each player is represented by a mouse-shaped game piece which travels along a non-continuous, roughly square-shaped path around the game board from the start to a continuous loop at the end. The path is segmented into spaces, some of which are marked with instructions, and "build" spaces that are marked simply with numbers ("2", "2-3" and "2-3-4").
The object of the game is to trap all of one's opponent's mice using the game's Rube Goldberg-style mouse trap, which is built upon the board during the course of the game. The trap begins with a crank which turns a set of gears. This begins a series of stages which ends in a cage being lowered over the "cheese wheel" space on the board, which is one of six spaces in the ending loop of the game path.
Players roll the six-sided die in turn-based play, and move their mouse the number of spaces rolled. If a player lands on a "build" space that corresponds with the number of players in the game (e.g. only "2-3-4" spaces for a four-player game), they must build the next unbuilt piece of the mouse trap, and take a piece of cheese, represented by cheese-shaped tokens. If the players reach the final loop of the board, they continue around it until the game ends; each "build" space in the loop requires a player to build two pieces of the mouse trap, and take two pieces of cheese.
Another space on the board is the "turn crank" space. Once the mouse trap is built, a player landing on one of these spaces while there is an opposing mouse on the "cheese wheel" space must turn the crank to start the mouse trap. If the mouse trap successfully runs its course (there are several stages in which the mouse trap may fail if not properly set), the cage will fall on any opposing mice on the space, and they are out of the game. If there are no opposing mice on the "cheese wheel" space, the player may trade one piece of cheese, for the opportunity to choose an opponent who is not on a "safe" space and roll the die to move their mouse. One may repeat this trade as many times in a turn as they have pieces of cheese; when an opposing mouse is on the "cheese wheel" space, the crank can then be turned. Once there is only one mouse left in the game, that player wins. Others spaces require the player to move their mouse in a prescribed manner.
The mouse trap in the game has never changed in operation, though the color and shape of some pieces has been slightly modified over the years. There are several stages which form the mouse trap, and most stages are composed of multiple pieces. A 1990s ad campaign for the game involved a song which listed most of the stages of the mouse trap.
In a proper operation, the player turns the crank, which rotates a vertical gear, connected to a horizontal gear. As that gear turns, it pushes an elastic-loaded lever until it snaps back in place, hitting a swinging boot. This causes the boot to kick over a bucket, sending a marble down a zig-zagging incline which feeds into a chute. This leads the marble to hit a vertical pole, at the top of which is an open hand, palm-up, which is supporting a larger ball (changed later on to a marble just like the starter one). The movement of the pole knocks the ball free to fall through a hole in its platform into a bathtub, and then through a hole in the tub onto one end of a seesaw. This launches a diver on the other end into a tub which is on the same base as the barbed pole supporting the mouse cage. The movement of the tub shakes the cage free from the top of the pole and allows it to fall.
There are several points at which the mousetrap can commonly fail. If not built level, or if kicked too hard, the marble can fall off the incline; it can also miss the chute if not properly aligned; the contact of the marble with the pole may fail to dislodge the ball above; the ball may fail to propel the diver into the tub; the movement of the tub may be insufficient to dislodge the cage; or the cage may get stuck on the barbed pole partway down.
wherein you throw out the rule book and just crush grapes in interesting ways for an hour
Fireball Island
I wonder how long it'll be before I go back and all the marbles are missing
also
5 MINUTES UNTIL I TAKE OVER. HEH HEH HEH.
mother
fucking
hungry
hippos
Edit: Gah.
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
A group of my friends own many different copies of risk.
I think there are at least 3 editions with different 'general' sort of functions.
2210 is way better than Godstorm though. The underworld in Godstorm makes the game take way too fucking long for no reason.
Me and my friends would play that in high school, just to hear him mock us.
WArhammer sure is a fun game.
I keep thinking GW would make a mint (well, a double mint) if they were less litigious and generally pulled their heads out of the crotchety old executive asses.
I owned this game.
It was fun. The Figures were awesome.
But after watching James Rolfe's thing I don't know how I ever played it.
SHEEP FOR ORE ANYONE?
Warmachine
Someone break it down for me, how much less will this game push me into bankruptcy than WH40k?
edit: Because apparently I can have my army led by Baba Yaga, and that does something for me.
GoFund The Portland Trans Pride March, or Show It To People, or Else!
Also who wants to play Wordfeud with me
PSN - MicroChrist
I'm too fuckin' poor to play
WordsWFriends - zeewoot
GOD I LOVE SETTLERS OF CATAN
Growing up where I did, we created our own variant called "Settlers of the Navajo Nation". It worked so well
PSN - MicroChrist
I'm too fuckin' poor to play
WordsWFriends - zeewoot
It really depends on how big you wanna play?
For 40K you basically need like an 1850 army or no one will play you.
Warmachine has a pretty flexible point scale.
or maybe Go is not a subject people really want to discuss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_cSnpoKMMk
teach us to not have autism plz
instead
Ew, game theory
Ew, conceptual strategy
Let's play Operation
I need to shave rather badly.
I kinda let it go for about a month and a half.
It's like a half inch long and I just noticed most of it is blond.
Ameritrash gamer.
I only play games that have no theme but only abstract concepts.
here
my razors
let me show you them
Amazingly my brother ALWAYS wins.
He is the Mozart of getting and using the X tile.
also, to whoever mentioned Rolfe, I wanna play this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRUL2r-4ts&feature=related
Pity my vocabulary sucks.