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Chestria. Each player has 11 randomly selected pieces in this game of placement and flipping. (3x(5x5), Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Sun, May 11, 2003 10:35 PM UTC:
To Peter (sorry for the wait):  Has Jenny played Golden Sun: The Lost Age
yet?  Because in it, you actually play as 'the dark side', except that
it turns out that you're actually the 'light side'.  (Also, rule
clarification:  A player may pass their last turn if and only if their
only move is a special move and they have no pieces on-board.)

To Mr. Kuchinski:  CALM DOWN PLEASE and reread the rules thoroughly. 
Also, go try Triple Triad Gold (find it at www.qhimm.net or
www.the-underdogs.org under 'T' if you can't get it at the former) to
see where I'm coming from.  There are no empty spaces at the end of a
game, queens only attack eight spaces, SGs attack five, the most powerful
piece is a Marshall/Cardinal (12 spaces if placed in the center).  Blue
can only have a clear advantage in the endgame if they can get over the
disadvantage of having to place the Fodder, and if Red cannot play a good
enough defense in order to try to nullify Blue's final moves (except for
the special move, of course; if Blue gets a very powerful special, Red
will have to work hard to overcome it).

--Jared

Nicholas Kuschinski wrote on Tue, May 6, 2003 04:05 AM UTC:
OK, let me get this straight. This is a game where the pieces are placed
randomly, each have one move, and are never removed from the board . . .
OK . . . There are also 20 different sorts of pieces, and 22 pieces on the
board at any given time (over half of the number of spaces) . . . There is
exactly ONE empty space on the playing field at the end of the game . . .
The armies are not only unequal, but unbalanced, as a player randomly gets
pieces that are as weak as a silver general (only three possible spaces
are under attack) or as powerful as a queen (nine of em) . . . -- . . . --
. . . -- AGGHHH!!!! What the . . . ??????? Help!! Help!! . . . AGGHHH!!!!
<br>
I have no idea what to say! this might be pushing it a little too far.
I'm about as liberal as they come, and it doesn't look to me like this
has much to do with chess at all. Also, it seems to me like blue has an
advantage, getting to make all of his decisions after he sees what red has
done, and also getting to place the last piece on the board (a big plus in
this sort of game). The randomness of the setup probably will throw things
off track enough so as to eliminate this factor, however, so I really
don't know what to think.

Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Apr 23, 2003 08:23 PM UTC:
Changes made.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 04:11 AM UTC:
Jared, no, I haven't tried TTG yet.

Peter Aronson wrote on Mon, Apr 21, 2003 03:44 AM UTC:
<blockquote><i> (Also, will you ask your daughter why you couldn't make a GS-themed variant? Why couldn't you have one player trying to light the Elemental Lighthouses, and the other player try to stop them?)</i> </blockquote> I asked Jenny, and she answered: <blockquote> I suppose you could, but it would be a very complicated Chess variant. And who would want to play the darkside? </blockquote>

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Sun, Apr 20, 2003 05:23 PM UTC:
Will the real Peter please stand up?  Now will the real Peter please add
the Chestria variant that gives the second player a copy of the first
player's army to the page?  (Also, will you ask your daughter why you
couldn't make a GS-themed variant?  Why couldn't you have one player
trying to light the Elemental Lighthouses, and the other player try to
stop them?)

To Glenn:  Did your nephews have any actual Triple Triad cards, which have
been out of print since 1999 and are very rare, or did they show it to you
on Final Fantasy 8?

To Tony, if you're still around:  Have you tried TTG yet?

--Jared

Peter Aronson wrote on Sun, Apr 20, 2003 04:39 AM UTC:
Alas, there is no editor named 'Mithter Petey', so your request can not be processed. <hr> My 11-year-old daughter really likes Golden Sun, or at least did until she lost it. She's highly skeptical about basing a CV on it, though.

Glenn Overby II wrote on Sun, Apr 20, 2003 12:22 AM UTC:
Jared: No, I'm in my mid-40s; my =son= is well over twenty. But my nephews are 19 and 12. I helped raise them to be gamers, and they taught me Triple Triad and Dragon Ball Z CCG among others. As for the RPG thing, I'm old-school tabletop myself (I started with D&D in 1975), because you can simply do so much more and be sociable to boot. But the continuing advances in PC/videogame technology make those games better all the time.

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Sat, Apr 19, 2003 11:32 PM UTC:
To Tony:  RPGs (meaning video-game RPG's, not tabletop D&D stuff) are just
plain cool, especially when you haven't hit twenty yet.  (Incidentally, I
haven't.)  And, just to note, Qhimm, who wrote Triple Triad Gold, is not
in any way affiliated with Squaresoft.

To Glenn:  Sorry!  I didn't expect that anyone here would have played it!
 Are you under twenty, too?

To Mithter Petey (tee hee hee!):  Could you also note in the Setup section
that a d20 is a twenty-sided die?  Just so people who aren't familiar
with that notation will know?

--Jared (who is trying to come up with a Golden Sun themed CV, because
Golden Sun (which is another RPG) is awesome)

Glenn Overby II wrote on Sat, Apr 19, 2003 03:30 PM UTC:
Jared, the 'obvious' is untrue. I have played Triple Triad a number of times, and found it enjoyable. But my nephews no longer live nearby, so I haven't done so in a while. :)

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Sat, Apr 19, 2003 03:17 AM UTC:
<p>Jared, ok. Point well taken on the board size. Actually, that comment was more musing than anything else. Regarding the little Z man, that's a reference to that little guy with a sword with a big Z on his jacket that's the Zillions icon on their web site and on the CD cover. I was just trying to be amusing, perhaps not so succesfully. Actually, I am intrigued with TT and will have to check their site. RPG's? I don't see the relevance. Overall, nice game.</p> <p>With regard to implementing the game in Zillions, here's a few thoughts. One could use two ?neutral players to drop the original array into the setup boards, randomly selecting from the possible pieces. Upon dropping the pieces could change owners to that of each player. The special 11th piece could have an attribute changed to allow its special move. The moves themselves should be straight forward. The drops would have to search in each move direction and again flip the ownership upon finding a opponent's piece. The win condition might be a little tricky. The winner would be the player that is both stalemated and has the most pieces on the board. Forced passed turns may be required. </p>

Peter Aronson wrote on Fri, Apr 18, 2003 10:21 PM UTC:
Clarification added. And calling me 'Mithter Petey' would definitely be going too far.

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Fri, Apr 18, 2003 09:17 PM UTC:
It is obvious to me that no one on these pages has ever played Triple Triad
before...

No, Peter, flipping is non-recursive, and if you don't clarify the rules
page right away then I'll start calling you 'Mithter Petey'!  (j/k)  If
it was recursive, the game would degenerate into a race to see who could
place the last link in a long chain, like John Lawson brought up.  It
would ultimately become cumbersome and boring.

To Tony Quintanilla:  First, it doesn't have to be a Fodder piece, but
since it never attacks anything and is often taken on the opponent's
first move, I decided to call it that.  And I don't want to make the main
board any bigger!  I was going for something simple and elegant, much like
the original (and brilliant) Triple Triad.  So I used the extra spaces as
'holding tanks', because I can!  (And what do you mean, 'Little 'Z'
Man'?)

This isn't a Chess/Go blend or a Chess/Othello blend!  It's a Chess/TT
blend!  So there!  I encourage EVERYONE here (and that means YOU TOO) to
play Triple Triad Gold at ttg.qhimm.com and broaden their horizons!  If
you like this you'll love that!  And while you're at it, go play an
RPG!

--Jared

P.S.  If this sounds irate, forgive me.  I'm tired.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Fri, Apr 18, 2003 03:28 AM UTC:
I didn't mean that each drop would be randomly selected, rather that the randomly selected array would be dropped from outside the board. Thus, the 41 squares could be used for the battle board instead of each player's own setup board. I was not very clear about it, though.

John Lawson wrote on Fri, Apr 18, 2003 01:15 AM UTC:
It seems to me that this is more of a Chess/Othello blend than a Chess/Go blend. I haven't played it, but I thought about it some, and it appears that if flips were 'cascaded', and if each player attacked the piece previously played, the effect would be that each move flips all the pieces on the board. Tony's idea of a larger battle board with pieces determined randomly each turn would not be as interesting as knowing what forces were available in advance, and then marshalling them to best advantage. The size of the game could be easily changed, of course, to tune it after the 43-square contest. So we could have 64-square Chestria, or 84-square Chestria, or Decimal Chestria, or (heaven forfend) Tai Chestria.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 09:43 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
<p>Jared, seriously, this is quite a nice game. </p> <p>I really like the idea of static pieces. Although you did not mention it, obviously this is a kind of Chess-Go blend.</p> <p>Apparently the players' boards are a kind of holding area. Would it be possible to expand the battlefield to 41 squares and just drop the randomly pieces directly on the Battlefield each turn? (Although your method would be much more implementable in ZOG (there's that again!)). You could just keep the one special square for the special replacement move. This would give you more room. You could even add more pieces to the setup</p> <p>The tactics of placement on the battlefield could be very interesting. The idea of flipping the ownership of the captured pieces I really like. That will certainly add another layer of complexity to the game, which is useful when you are playing on a small board. In fact, this creates a kind of movement if not of pieces then of piece-structures.</p> <p>I assume that you have considered that the random setup may/will probably create unequal armies. But, the idea of randomness in Chess is interesting in itself as long as it does not overwhelm the pure-strategy aspect of the game.</p> <p>A question: its not immediately clear to me why a Fodder piece should be obligatory on the first move.</p> <p>Final comment, someone please ZFRolize this game!</p>

Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 09:20 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
It's been a wonderful string of off-topic comments, but I'm afraid I'm actually going to comment on the game, or at least ask a question. <p> <ul> <li>OK, Jared, is flipping recursive? </ul> <p> What I mean by that, does a flipped piece, once flipped, cause other pieces to immediately flip? <p> For example: <b><pre> +---+---+---+ 5 | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+ 4 | | R | | | B | +---+---+---+---+---+ 3 | f | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+ 2 | | | | | | +---+---+---+---+---+ 1 | | | | +---+---+---+ a b c d e</pre></b> If I were to drop a White Ferz on <b>a3</b> (as shown above), it would flip the Black Rook on <b>b4</b>. Would the Rook, now White, then also flip the Black Bishop on <b>e4</b>?

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 05:43 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Ode to ZOG: Zillions of zee-are-effs and zee-es-gees, how can they be wrong?! The game by any other name would be as zweet!! No -effs or -gees about it!!! Touche' little 'Z' man!!!!

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 03:58 PM UTC:
Well, I don't talk like this around people I don't know, of course!  :P

Hey!  This is the fifteenth comment to this page, and not one of these
fifteen has anything to do with the actual GAME.  Hmmm....

John Lawson wrote on Thu, Apr 17, 2003 02:06 AM UTC:
Talk about dialects!
I use 'Zillions' to load a 'zee-ess-gee' of a 'zee-are-eff'.  Good
thing we only communicate in writing.

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 08:52 PM UTC:
Why, as 'zusguh', of course! I use Zog to load a zusguh of a zerf! :P

Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 06:03 PM UTC:
Gone, gone, gone like they never were there . . . were they?

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 05:04 PM UTC:
'You say tomahto...'
There's room for diversity here.  I pronounce 'ZRF' as 'zee-are-eff'.
 How do you pronounce 'ZSG'?

💡📝Jared McComb wrote on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 03:18 PM UTC:
Yes, Peter, those need to be removed, since they have no context now.

And I pronounce it 'zerfolize', since I also pronounce 'zrf' as
'zerf', but that's just me.

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Apr 16, 2003 04:14 AM UTC:
'ZRFolize'? As neologisms go, that's pretty good, and meets a hitherto unsatisfied need for a way to refer to the creation of a ZRF without using the passive voice. I imagine it pronounced, 'zeROFolize'.

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