Category: Boards and Tokens (Page 9 of 12)

Avalon Hill produced statistics based versions of the major sports. Baseball was the most enjoyable, especially because the rules for making your own players were included. The big, index-card-sized FAC cards that determined what happened were chock full of encoded information for any situation.

And then there was the dreaded, "Z".

Some of the same things carried over to the football game, which I dearly loved, too. The one thing I did not like, though, was that it was almost impossible to figure out how to add your own players. This became a bigger issue when updated player rosters ended in 1991.

A few hobby sites have some ideas on card creation, but none of them seem compatible with original card sets. In other words, using their rules on the 1991 teams would not create something close to the 'official' cards from Avalon Hill. Not even close in some cases.

So I decided to attempt to reverse engineer a set of 1991 official cards. Turns out that almost every card is arbitrary in some way. Two statistically identical players can have different results. Art Monk's card is wrong and only they know how they came up with Andre Rison's card.

So, I'm in mid-process of refining a consistent and universal set of rules to generate cards. This, of course, will mean refactoring official sets. With all the football stats around, that's not too hard.

More later.

Thinking about a board game based on this machine. Just jotting down a few ideas:

Move proceeds around a board as player assemble pieces to construct their machine. The first to make it to the patent office with a working analytical engine wins. Players first make a difference engine and either patent it or build one by commission. Pieces from difference engine funds analytical engine.

If a player builds one for patent and not commission, he or she can use all the pieces of the difference machine to build analytical machine. Everyone else can only reuse their original (before being commissioned) pieces.

There are three pieces - spacer, cog, and rack.

The rack is a piece that allows the machine to be built 'up' a level. Presumably, the more racks, the more variables that can be calculated at once, but also the longer it takes to finish the machine.

The spacer allows the machine to be built 'out' a level. Presumably, the more spacers, the more decimal places that can be calculated for each variable. Once a spacer is added, it is added to every level.

Cog is a bit of machinery that fits on the grid created by racks and spacers. For example, a machine with 5 racks and 8 spacers would require 40 cogs to complete.

There would need to be a funding source, so I guess each player is a hobbyist until if and when a company commissions a machine to be built. Each would have different specifications and different advantages (more cogs per turn, alternate build rules, etc.)

Upon completion, they would get paid and then start to build the analytical engine.

Need to add in bonus or random elements like:

Ada helps your project (build at twice the rate)
Building trouble (destroys rack or spacer)
Lose funding. Keep your pieces, lose those purchased by company commissioning the machine.
Cogs go bad and must be replaced. or only red cogs go bad.
An entire rack goes bad and must be replaced.
A green rack goes bad or a red rack goes bad.

Piece would be two different colors to distinguish pieces built by you, the inventor, and those purchased by company commissioning you. Say Green are built by you and red built by company. When difference machine is finished, you can use only the green pieces to start analytical engine. (Thus if you built it entirely yourself, you could reuse all the pieces.)

Analytical Engine would need fourth piece, don't know what to name it. Maybe replace cogs or modify cogs. Maybe analytical cogs cost more, but difference cogs can be modified very faster. For example in one turn you may get an analytical cog or convert three difference cogs to an analytical cog.

Building rules:

Rack pieces can only be removed from the top down, not the bottom up.
Removing a spacer affects every rack. The cogs lost cannot be reused. (Someone may remove a spacer in order to finish their machine faster.)
When you start on your analytical engine, you must add at least one rack and one spacer.
A difference machine must be at least 6 racks by 6 spacers.

Unless directed by card or company paying you (difference engine only), you can only add the piece you land on while moving your token around the board. If you are being paid to build, it must be a red piece. If you are going it alone, it must be a green piece.

I have been fascinated lately with variations on chess. The one played by many in Europe, including current Grandmasters, is Janus Chess. The board has two extra spaces (10 x 8 board) and each side has a Janus, a combination of a knight and bishop.

Having a combination piece means that a player can be checkmated with a Janus alone.

Reading about it, though, I stumbled upon a website with many, many different chess variants. People have combined pieces of all kinds, including ones from Shogi (chinese chess) and Tamerlane. Folks come up with some wild variations, including some rather unplayable ones. There's a rabbit that can make as many knight moves in a counterclockwise fashion as it can. (Am I in check from your rabbit? Let me check.) There's variations of the knight that make the "L" longer, wider, or both. There's a checker piece that captures by jumping. The list is really large at chessvariants.org.

My favorite, however, is Chess with Different Armies. Four different armies have been playtested by the inventor and it is fascinating to see a game being played. Both sides are pretty much equal, but the tactics of each of definitely not the same. I imagine a tournament where players can switch armies between matches. I imagine two variant armies squaring off will be the most exciting matches.

If I ever live out my fantasy of opening a store, I'd like to create and sell Chess with Multiple Armies. It could be like the release of Deadwood with new armies every year. Heck, I may do that anyway.

Of course, I also like Arimaa, designed to confound computers. Enjoy the wikipedia reading.