A Shot of Orange Juice (the Blog)

This is going to be a brief one with the other prominent game in Wheel of Time appearing in the normal monthly time slot (I’m sure fans of the series will know exactly which game I’m talking about). My personal narrative can be seen in the next regularly scheduled FTG article. This article is going to be a bit on the thin side (relatively), and is more for completionist sake than otherwise.

Game Comparison

Go

Unfortunately, I don’t have any of the Wheel of Time books in a searchable ebook format like many of the others in my collection, so I can’t give direct quotes. But pretty much everytime you see this game referenced in WoT it just shouts. “This game is pretty much just Go.” 2 players, different colors, place stones, capture enemy pieces. I believe there’s even some mention of them being placed in the same fashion as in Go. Although I may be misremembering. Unfortunately, I don’t have the books in digital form, so I won’t really be able to search for confirmation.

Pieces

All pieces are the same. Round white or black discs.

Win Conditions

It seems like the Win Conditions are never disputed in Stones, unlike what may be the case in Go. Or at least there doesn’t seem to be the bogged down time of “Oh let me count all of my controlled territory.” and see how it is versus yours. It’s pretty much just “You fell into my trap, now I win.

Homework

Ok, what you should do is actually read the link provided in External Links. It’s fairly short, and gives a nice side by side comparison.

External Links

http://13depository.blogspot.com/2009/03/stones.html

ASOIAF was always one of the more popular fantasy novels in my eyes, but when the show came out a few years ago it absolutely erupted with new people to watch, read, and generally worry about the characters of Westoros. A quick web search leads to a fair amount of discussion about Cyvasse (not to be mistaken with Kvass, the fermented beverage). So we’ll use that to gauge some of the assumptions on. So I’ll try to keep a similar format as the post about  Keschet so it’s familiar to any of the readers out there, but also improve things over time. I’d imagine it will always be fairly long-winded, as I do go on a bit. Maybe in the future I can break these posts into multiple pieces to be able to post more often, but also easier to consume in one sitting.

I’m not a researcher here, mostly an enthusiast and hobbyist, so by no means will any of this attempt to be complete, but things I’m looking for our direct quotes from the books, and interview questions with GRRM himself.

Game Comparison: GRRM – “A bit of chess, a bit of blitzkrieg, a bit of stratego. Mix well and add imagination.” – GRRM.

Now I’ve never played Blitzkrieg, which is a 1965 war game from Avalon Hill. But for me, Cyvasse always reminded me of Feudal, with the addition of adjustable terrain pieces. This is mostly because of how some of the descriptions take place.

Book Quotes

Feast of Crows

• “There were ten different pieces, each with its own attributes and powers, and the board would change from game to game, depending on how the players arrayed their home squares.”
• “He always sets his squares up the same way, with all the mountains in the front and his elephants in the passes…So I send my dragon through to eat his elephants.”
• “She touched one of the cyvasse pieces, the heavy horse.”

A Dance with Dragons

• “as they arranged their tiles on either side of a carved wooden screen…Tyrion almost grabbed his dragon but thought better of it. Last game he had brought her out too soon and lost her to a trebuchet…He moved his light horse toward Haldon’s mountains…The Halfmaester moved his spears.”
• “Young Griff arrayed his army for attack, with dragon, elephants, and heavy horse up front…Tyrion moved his elephants.”
• “He picked up his heavy horse…Tyrion moved his crossbows…The dwarf pushed his black dragon across a range of mountains…”
• “Smiling he seized his dragon, flew it across the board…Your king is trapped. Death in four.”
• “onyx elephant…alabaster army…He moved his heavy horse.”
• Tyrion advanced his spearmen. Qavo replied with his light horse. Tyrion moved his crossbowmen up a square…toying with his rabble…plucking up his dragon. ‘The most powerful piece in the game,” he announced, as he removed one of Qavo’s elephants…He moved his catapult again, closed his hand around Tyrion’s alabaster dragon, removed it from the board.”
• “Near the end of that final contest, with his fortress in ruins, his dragon dead, elephants before him and heavy horse circling around his rear…”

Board setup

While originally I pictured a chess-like board (8×8), there are some references to a hex board, one of which appearing in Fantasy Flights CCG which displayed a picture of a Cyvasse game. This combined with the mention of Blitzkrieg leads me to the same conclusion that the westeros.org forums decided on. A large hexagonal board. Additionally, you have specific tile hexes that you place at the game setup, when the pieces are hidden to the opponent via a screen. Now for those of you are unfamiliar with hex based movement the nomenclature is the same as checkerboard movement, but it might be a bit confusing at first. Orthogonal moves are straight lines from adjacent squares. Diagonal moves “hop” over the adjacent hexes, in what looks like a more traditional “horizontal” or “vertical” movements.

Pieces

10 pieces, each with their own attributes and powers. Here are some potential movements, notes I think each piece could have. (Obviously no playtesting has gone into this, and aside from some light reading of the westeros.org forum post.). The number in parenthesis is hypothetical strength values.

• King(2) – Starts in the Fortress, limited movement range, player losses if captured.
• Dragon(7) – Unaffected by terrain movement restrictions. Large movement range. Orthogonal and Diagonal.
• Elephant(5) – Short Charge Diagonal movement. Maybe 2 or 3 squares. Or 1 square Orthogonal. (Unable to charge through Rivers)
• Heavy Horse(4) – Medium movement.
• Light Horse(3) – Long movement. Good for flanking.
• Trebuchet(4) – Long range attack, can damage Fortress. Slow movement.
• Spearman(2) – Medium movement.  +1 when attacked by Horse
• Crossbowman(2) – Medium movement. Medium range attack.
• Rabble(1) – Short-Medium movement.

Terrain types

• Fortress – A defensive structure, potentially the King has to start inside the Fortress. Probably multiple squares in size. Each tile has a full fortress on the front, and a damaged fortress on the back to represent damage.
• Mountain – Each player would start with a number of these, able to create a “range” of restricted movement or “passes” to funnel traffic through.
• River – Unmentioned, but I’d be surprised if Rivers aren’t another terrain type. You’d get a handful, and pieces couldn’t move through and past a River during it’s movement.

Strength Values

One interesting addition that some people were considering were strength values of pieces. Now in most abstract games, the pieces don’t have strength values (or all values are 1). So in Chess, my Pawn can always capture your Queen if need be. One example of strength values is Stratego. I think they recently changed the ordering of the numbers in Stratego but basically your stronger pieces appear less often and always defeat weaker pieces. Except in the case of the Spy who can defeat the strongest piece, but nothing else. There are also Attack/Defense values like you see in Magic. When two pieces fight, there isn’t a guarantee that one of the pieces are removed. This isn’t very interesting from an abstract game perspective. Any time two pieces conflict you want at least one of them removed from the board, otherwise you might have to keep track of damage which usually doesn’t fit on a gameboard. Another way of handling strength values is the way Axis and Allies handles it. Each of your pieces that attack rolls a die. If you roll your attack value or higher, than you score a strike. Each strike removes a piece from the skirmish. This certainly fits a bit in the theme of fighting mini-skirmishes across the board, allowing the army pieces to work together. But it’s a fair amount of overhead, especially given the abstract nature that Cyvasse appears to be.

I think the simplest way to handle it is to just do straight number comparison. Ex. My Charging Elephant is worth 5 +1 from an adjacent Flanking Light Horse, +1 from a nearby Crossbowman is 7. Your Dragon is worth 7, so both the Elephant and Dragon would be killed. Supporting units aren’t destroyed in this manner.

Some final thoughts

Hidden deployment with the big reveal is a neat mechanic. Seeing exactly how you’re opponent places his pieces and starting terrains can greatly impact how to play the game and what type of game will be played. Related to this is the terrain pieces. I could easily setup a trap with my terrain pieces around my Fortress, forcing my opponent to deal with heavy losses just to attack. It’s hard to have a planned opening, when you don’t know exactly what you’ll be facing across the board.

Ranged attacking pieces are interesting. Capturing without movement, forces your opponent to extend into you, allowing you to create a trap at a mountain pass with crossbows and trebuchet.

All of the above is assuming single piece unit back and forth. But maybe you could move more than one piece during each of your turns. Maybe you could move up to 10 strength values a turn. This could make the landscape change drastically from turn to turn, as pieces you think are safe become surrounded and destroyed before you realize.

External links:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/58545-complete-cyvasse-rules/ – One ruleset

http://gameofcyvasse.com/ – Another ruleset

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:92172 – 3d printed set

Well, as I mentioned in the last post about this series I thought it might be a fun thought experiment to maybe write some rules, or game structure for games referenced in some of the fantasy books I’ve seen. Now this write-up is about one of the two games I’ve read of recently called Keschet, appearing in Blood Song by Anthony Ryan. The first book in the Raven’s Shadow Series. Now firstly, if you enjoy your Epic Fantasy, I’d highly recommend Blood Song. I looked around briefly and I believe this is a planned trilogy. With the second book coming out later this year. So for those of you with “waiting for next book” anxiety could probably be fine with putting this on a normal spot on your reading list. Lastly, this write-up is a bit of a cheat, which is why it’s happening first for this series as there was a surprise in store for me as I finished Blood Song earlier this week. Apparently Mr. Ryan decided to put together an abbreviated rules list for Keschet! So, the following will more be a reference for Keschet, along with some discussion of the pieces, and some optional rules that could be considered.

[su_spoiler title=”Keschet Rules”]From Appendix II in Blood Song by Anthony Ryan: Keschet is played by two players on a board of one hundred squares. Each player begins the game with 1 Emperor, 1 General, 1 Scholar, 2 Merchants, 3 Thieves, 4 Lancers, 5 Archers and 8 Spearmen. At the start of the game a player may place any piece in any square in the first three rows at their end of the board. The opposing player will then place a piece of their choosing in the first three rows of their end of the board. All pieces are then placed on the board in turn. The player who placed the first piece then makes the first move. A piece is taken if the square it occupies is occupied by an opposing piece. The game is won if the Emperor is taken or if the Emperor is the only piece remaining the losing player. Any piece in an adjoining square to the Scholar is protected and cannot be taken. The Scholar may move one or two squares in any direction. The Emperor can move up to four squares in any direction. The General can move up to ten squares in any direction. The Archer can move a up to six squares vertically or horizontally. The Thief can move one square in any direction. A player has the use of any piece taken by the Thief. The Spearman can move up to two squares vertically or horizontally. The Lancer can move up to ten squares diagonally. The Merchant can move either one square in any direction or can move to any vacant square adjoining the square occupied by the Emperor horizontally, vertically or diagonally, if the route is unobstructed by another piece.[/su_spoiler]

Right away this game feels like Chess++, and I’m sure that’s exactly the author’s intention. Played on a 10×10 board, instead of an 8×8. Emperors (4′) are Kings (Player loses if their Emperor is captured, or if the Emperor is the last piece the control). Generals (10′) are Queens. Lancers (10′ diagonal) are Bishops. And lots of other similarities. The board is setup an interesting manner and since the “White” player needs to place his piece first to give information away to his opponent it nicely balances the ability to go first, which is typically considered an advantage in chess. It also allows for tactics rather than opening studies to be the preferred strategy. Sure certain openings or piece pairings would be more popular, but much is given away during this opening placement, and could be counterbalanced if appropriately considered.

A few things to note that pique my interest as a former Chess player.

• Opening – Interesting that the opening is neither standardized, nor hidden (like in stratego) but each piece is placed one after the other in the first three ranks. With 25 total pieces and 30 squares to fill up, there are plenty of opening positions. Although I’d imagine you’d place pieces in a way to draw out when to reveal where your important pieces will sit. With your back center pieces commonly being placed in the last 20%.
• The Scholar – Probably the most powerful piece on the board, as it protects all adjoining pieces from capture. I’m sure most strategies create a Scholar block, where the scholar is surrounded by 8 other pieces, one of which is the Emperor.
• The Thief – Another interesting piece, reminding me of Bughouse. The game that filled up the afternoons of my youth in between rounds at large chess tournaments. Now the author mentioned his interpretation about how exactly the Thief works, since it’s pretty unclear in the rules provided. Basically it sounds like when the Thief captures, he was picturing placing the captured piece (switching sides!) to an adjoining square immediately upon capture. A reader stated he had played a few games, and they were placing the captured piece on the first 3 ranks but couldn’t place a capture. It sounds very similar to how a Bughouse player might place the piece. Your turn would be taken up by reintroducing the piece to the board on your side.

In some ways, I’d kind of like to see Keschet take a page from Bombalot‘s playbook. Instead our primary differences between pieces is “how many of each do I have?”, “how far is their reach?”, and “which direction can they move?” and each piece with a special ability is so weak it may not even matter they have an ability.

Special Abilities:

• Scholar (2′) – As I mentioned, this piece seems like the strongest, especially in the middle of a block since nothing would be able to disrupt it. A player could just play with their heavy pieces and not worry about their defensive front. With 25 pieces, would holding 9 of them in a block for protection cause strategic impairement?
• Merchant (1′) – Another defensive piece, as it moves slow, but it can always run back to the emperor if it has a direct line to an adjoining square. The ability is interesting but it seems like it will never capture anything (1′ reach normally, and doesn’t seem to be able to capture on it’s return flight)
• Thief (1′) – I really like the flavor of the ability but with the short (1′) reach, it’s rarely going to proc, except when used defensively.

tehdiplomat suggestions:

1. The thief “steals” the movement type of the last piece it captures similar to the “Imitator” in Bombalot . Place that piece in the same square as the thief to denote how it moves. The next time the thief captures remove the previously captured piece, and place the newly captured piece next to the thief. (Should stealing be optional? Should stealing be a single instance? Should thieves have more interesting movement, one square at a time won’t allow them to capture very much?)
2. Different direction and length of movement isn’t enough to make the pieces unique. Where is the interesting jumping movement of a Knight? Where’s the awkward Pawn capture (I’ll ignore en passant for now)? The Merchant has something similar to a Castle, but it’s a weak piece to begin with, so “castling” with it doesn’t really protect the king from harm, nor move a powerful piece into striking position. Where’s the Pawn upgrades by reaching the last rank? We have 8 different pieces, 5 of which can move in any direction (2 with 1′ range + special powers, 1 with 2′ + special powers, 1 with 4′ range + !important, 1 with 10′ range). Of the rest, the most common piece moves 2′ orthogonally. The second most common moves 6′ orthogonally. And the last moves 10′ diagonally. With all those pieces, we could have added some further variation in. The thieves especially deserve some interesting movement (Thieves can move further, but can only capture short). And why do Archers have to move to capture?
3. Reduce the power of the Scholar. Being able to protect 8 pieces at once is way powerful, especially when one of those is your leader piece. Now obviously, if you only have 9 pieces on the board, you wouldn’t be able to do anything, but I’d imagine skilled players would be able to force a draw by evasion if the board got thin enough at some points. Maybe each time the scholar moves, it chooses 1 or 2 adjoining pieces to be protected. This prevents the scholar from burying itself in a corner and protecting all three pieces. Obviously those pieces would lose that protection if they moved (or moved away from the scholar?). This should prevent ties and stalemates, although I guess Scholar blocks would be an interesting reason for games that span multiple days. Anyway, it feels like an “unfun” mechanic so I’d limit how it works.

Book References:

“Games can last for days”

“masters devote lives to the intricacy”

“Only about 200 openings”

Named moves/openings:

“Liar’s Attack” – Brings victory in 10 moves, by concealing an attack in a defensive opening. Targets the Scholar to shatter defensive formations.

“Bowman’s Switch” – Moving offensively against two objects, leaving an opponent ignorant of the ultimate target as the game develops.