Game #40: Fire and Ice by David Brain

David,

As usual, fantastic presentation, the html really makes it easy to understand the game. Would that we all had the skills to put something like this together!

My standard GDW reaction to abstracts is "these are tough to evaluate", and that remains true for your game, I fear; abstracts like this have a strong spatial element, and it's hard for me to have a sense for whether the game would be fun or not because so much of its tension hangs on the spatial element.

A few observations, in no specific order of importance:

The "first tile must be in row 4" and "second tile must be in row 2, or 3, depending on number of players" already sounds like trouble to me. I'm sure there's a perfectly legitimate reason for this rule, but however important it is, it just jars the elegance of the design, and right from the start no less! What's the motivation for this rule?

The theme is, as you say, non-existant, however, what I felt like I would have liked would be some differentiation between "fire" and "ice". It feels that with each placement, I'm only trying for "sameness" (if I want to make a big island) or "difference" (if I want to keep a big island from scoring), but beyond that, there's no preference for fire or ice in principle. It seems like adding just a drop or two of theme could break the symmetry between these and push the game into (maybe) more interesting territory. Maybe some extra (but simple!) rules, like when you place a fire tile, you can "melt" an adjacent ice tile. Maybe, conversely, placing an "ice" tile has some different effect; maybe ice "grows" if unchecked by fire, or something.

It seems like players may either have too many scoring markers, or too much freedom. The fact that in your example game, better than half the game goes by before a non-flag tile is placed makes the "you must flip a tile" mechanic somewhat superfluous for much of the game. Moreover, since it doesn't seem like flags can be moved, there's a dilemma where, if you don't get your flags out early enough, the people who do will score repeatedly on their flags and run away with the game. Yet, if you do get your flags out early, the game's scoring configuration will be on the board relatively early in the game, and the rest of the game will just be details. Which of course you can justify with "well, at least the game isn't too long", but a superfluous endgame is a superfluous endgame, however quick it is; of course, it's quite possibly, maybe even likely, that the endgame is not superfluous. Nevertheless, have you tried the game with the rule "EITHER flip a tile OR place a new one"?

I'm very skeptical that you could play with 6 players; it seems like, with each player only getting 6 turns, and with 24 of the board's 36 spaces being occupied by flags, this version of the game would be cluttered and not worth playing. Have you tried it out with that number?

The game feels kind of like it's an abstract version of Carcassonne with a few twists. I suppose it's somewhat unfair to compare any game that involves "place a tile, then put a score marker on it" to Carc, but I think your game's similarities go a little beyond that; the size-dependent scoring, the "can't place multiple markers on the same island", etc. That said, I think that having scoring markers of different types is interesting and clever. I'm not positive I like having to trigger scoring every turn; it seems like you could easily end up in a situation where you can't help but give more points to other players than you give to yourself. I also worry that there's an "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" effect where two players with the same scoring flag (ie, both "A" or both "B" or whatever) on one island can grow the island and keep scoring points. I call this situation "petty cooperation" -- it's the analogue of "petty diplomacy" (You hit me, so I'm going to hit you). I don't find that kind of cooperation interesting, if players can stick to it and not have to explore new or more fruitful alliances.

The game system is simple, intuitive, and elegant, and I like that. I like the potential "bomb" effect of the cross tile. Have you ever tried the cross tile's use being "flip all adjacent tiles" instead of just "make all adjacent tiles the same color as the cross tile"? It seems like the cross would be less powerful this way, but it may not be overly powerful currently.

One other minor thing, in your example, I believe Purple's 2nd play was suboptimal; by scoring C, he made 2 points relative to Black and White. Had he scored A, he would have still been up 2 relative to Black, but up 4 relative to White. I understand that players make bad plays sometimes, but the players in examples should always make "perfect" plays or else people will be confused (or, conversely, you should point out when your "example" players make mistakes).

As for a theme; here's a simple idea for a theme, with a rules change included, just for the sake of it. The "red" tiles now become "Elves" and the "blue" tiles now become "Dwarves". You are building communities of elves and dwarves. Additionally, you have 3 types of structures (instead of 4) you can build: Forests, Gardens, and Caves (to replace the A,B,C,D flags). There's a twist: when you build these structures in Elf communities, they payout as:

Forest: Score 2 pts for each Elf tile in the community
Garden: Score 1 pt for each Elf tile in the community
Cave: Score 0 pts for each Elf tile in the community

In a Dwarf community, on the other hand, they payout as:

Forest: Score 0 pts for each Dwarf tile in the community
Garden: Score 1 pt for each Dwarf tile in the community
Cave: Score 2 pts for each Dwarf tile in the community

So the idea is that the different structures now have different values depending on where you build them -- this is a possible route to the "asymmetry" I mentioned before. With some appropriately interesting rules about flipping tiles, this could be a neat extension of the game.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. Overall, I think it sounds like it will play out just fine, although, just to reiterate, I worry that the game's outcome will rely too heavily on the early game; I don't care for the restrictions on early placements; I think some asymmetry between Fire and Ice would be interesting; I worry that the similarities to Carcassonne may be too overt; maybe not!

I'd be interested to hear what the comments from the Hippodice group were; I assume they'd be more insightful than what we're likely to come up with, but maybe not! Best of luck with the game!

-Jeff

Another off-the-wall idea, inspired by the Red/Blue thing, would be to give the game an election theme. In the media analysis of the US presidential election, states that are going to be carried by the Republican candidate are colored red and those that are going to the Democratic candidate are colored blue. I'm not sure what the "A-B-C-D" tokens would represent, and indeed, making the game work for multiple players whilst only having a 2-party election would require some cleverness, but I'm sure you're up to it, if it's a theme you like. You could even reconfigure the board into a different shape, perhaps one approimating the shape of the US or something, though that might just screw up your elegant abstract too much.

Just another thought, take it or leave it!

-Jeff

Hi David ... nice game! :) It's probably no surprise to anyone here that this is "my kinda game" ... ;)

I like Jeff's idea of having different types of flags and having them differently valued depending on which type of tile they are on. In his example, I think the elves/dwarves theme could definitely work. (As an aside, I haven't come up with a workable theme idea yet -- but for some reason the phrase "schools of fish" keeps forcing its way into my frontal lobe :? ...)

From reading the instructions, I assume that "remove a flag" assumes that the player would only be allowed to remove one of his own flags? (Or did I get that wrong?) If that is the case, have you considered allowing players to place/remove opponents' flags?

I think I'll need to let this one perculate in my brain over the next couple of hours and see what else comes to mind for posting.

-Bryk

Abstract isn't my favorite games, but if you don't mind about a small review from my part.

When I read the examples I find that the scoring when up quite rapidly and often by small increment. I first tough was that a pegging system like Cribbage board would be nice in that case. Yes it's more expensive but I find it so much more elegant than a point system a la Carcassone.

Since you have a defined number of tiles. Is a 6x6 grid is necessary. I was thinking about letting the player place what they want next to another existing tile. I'm sorry I haven't played the game. Maybe with testing I'm plain wrong.

My suggestion to avoid the starting phase that a player has to play in a certain way is to place 2 tiles next to each other before anybody play. Maybe without any flag. That could lead to a better start than having nobody return anything for a while.

As already mentioned, I think (at least from you example), that 4 tokens is a bit too many. I would go with 3, but again, maybe you tried this and I'm plain wrong.

Here's just some random ideas for you. Hope it will help you in a way.

Have a good day.

It seems that you have tough out all my comments.

I tried to raise question rather then finding problems.

Hope it help a bit.

Wow... that sounds like a particularly clever idea. I like it a lot.

At any rate, I only had a chance to glance at the rules, but I got the impression that there was maybe too much going on with the tiles, the flags, the special tiles... for an abstract game I got the feeling it needed to be more straightforeward. I'll read the rules again and maybe put together a better comment for you.

- Seth

P.S. Speaking of too much going on, the Princess Bride thing may suffer from the same problem. Streamline, man! It's been working for All For One (so far)!

Maybe it should be 2 of three then, since the game is short? Wouldn't that be the same/similar?

- Seth

So you think 2 of 3 is not interesting? It seems like it's a better fit with the same mechanic. Choosing from A, B, and C as opposed to A, B, C, and D isn't really "reducing the options" by the way.

I was unable to post this earlier due to a 'Invalid_session' error, so I PMed it to Scurra instead. I reproduce it here in case it triggers ideas for anyone else.

Ignoring the 'exception', you already have a restriction that the tile must be placed adjacent to one other tile...how much more difficult is it to force placement adjacent to two? For that matter, given the obvious incentives to place adjacently, is this restriction itself necessary, or is it better left as an emergent behavior?

Ah. My perhaps overly self-deprecating stance was meant to hedge against precisely this sort of whoopsie. Didn't want you to think that I wasn't paying attention to you. ^_^b In case your theoretical players are also reading the rules at one in the morning, you might want to be a bit more explicit about this, and it also couldn't hurt to point out that the cross tile (quintessence?) doesn't flip surrounding tiles when flipped, only when placed.

The obvious solution I see to the above is moving to a 60 square board (an 8x8 with four seed islands?) which covers your bases (NPI) for up to six players. If you can streamline scoring (perhaps having the score phase only on every Xth full round?) and/or add a bit more variety to the special tiles, I think the game could bear that length.

Thanks! I've had several more thoughts along these lines. First, rather than blocks, you can use tiles if you use the traditional symbols for the elements. (see http://www.levity.com/alchemy/symelem.html) When 'flipping', you must flip to the other side of the tile, but may then orient the triangle either direction. Of course, this doesn't provide a helpful guide to the heat/moisture qualities, but...*shrug*

For extra fun, have special tiles correspond to the three principles.
Wherever Salt is played on the board, the nearest orthogonal neighbor in each of the four directions is pulled to the adjacent space without flipping it. Reverse this for Sulphur, having the nearest neighbor move away along the rookwise line until it hits the next tile or the edge of the board. For Mercury, have the four adjacent tiles rotate one position around it, CW or CCW (player's choice).

Several other correspondences with the classical elements allow the possibility of breaking the symmetry (if this is desirable) or just providing easy-to-find bits.

First, there is a natural vertical ordering of the elements...Fire -> Air -> Water -> Earth from lightest to heaviest. You could allow two vertically adjacent tiles which are in the 'wrong' order to swap with each other. About as Aristotle as it gets, here.

There is also a fairly commonly found cyclical relationship among the elements, namely Water follows Fire follows Air follows Earth follows Water. Instead of allowing two options when changing the element of a tile, you could only allow the one following in the cycle. Note that in this case two of the transitions are to the opposite element, so this does change things a bit...in this case you'd probably be better with the blocks than the tiles, for clarity.

Last but not least, Plato decided that the classical elements (including Aether) corresponded to the regular polyhedra commonly named after him, as follows.

Fire-tetrahedron
Earth-cube
Wind-octahedron
Aether-dodecahedron
Water-icosahedron

It's a shame most game designers won't have different colors of these lying around to use...^_^
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and here's his reply (to save him the trouble...nothing seemed confidential)
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This is a very good point. I never tried the game without a board to see if specific restrictions were unnecessary: the game clearly worked as it was, and my other Hippodice entry needed more testing (not enough, as it happened, but that's life.)

Without a board but starting with two adjacent tiles, one red and one blue, I suspect that no-one would question that their tiles had to be placed adjacent - and the ones that did are the sort of players who know what the answer is, but just want to make trouble :-)

The obvious solution I see to the above is moving to a 60 square board (an 8x8 with four seed islands?) which covers your bases (NPI) for up to six players. If you can streamline scoring (perhaps having the score phase only on every Xth full round?) and/or add a bit more variety to the special tiles, I think the game could bear that length.

Now I know why I didn't do this: because I've got a completely different game that uses an 8x8 grid with four starting spaces. Obviously, that is no reason why this game shouldn't use that set up, simply my inability to step to one side and view it properly.

Indeed, a 60 tile game has to be the ideal size for it, now you come to mention it.

[snipped your excellent theme again!]
I love the idea of making it a sort of "Ancient Greek view of the cosmos" game but that might be going quite a long way beyond the original vision of a small-ish two-rule game with some neat tactical interactions.
But that doesn't mean it isn't worth developing the idea in several different directions.

Well now you come to mention it :-) (I've actually got lots of paper models of the Platonic solids sitting around on the top of my bookcases, but not appropriately coloured sadly.)