Enantiomerfolk, a strategy game for an Icehouse set

Setup:

A 6x6 square board is set up as shown below with stacked pairs of pyramids. If you only have one set of stackable Icehouse pieces, you will have to use a combination of small/medium, medium/large and small/large stacks. This is ok, because pyramid size plays no role in this game. If you don't have any stackable Icehouse pieces, go order them from LooneyLabs! They can be used for a number of other games, and are generally neat.

The two players are called Clockwise and Counter-clockwise. Pieces belonging to Clockwise are rotated ~22.5 degrees clockwise from the square grid, likewise Counter-clockwise's pieces are rotated counter-clockwise by ~22.5 degrees.)

Play:

Players alternate turns. Clockwise starts.

Each turn a player may do one of three things: move a piece, attack with a piece, or drop a piece in hand. After the first turn, only pieces with a different top-color and bottom-color from the piece that the opponent used in the previous turn may be used.

Moving a piece. A non-attacking piece may be moved to any empty (horizontally or vertically) adjacent cell. Attacking pieces may not be moved. A player may move pieces belonging to either player. After a piece is moved, if there were pieces attacking it, they become standing and belong to the player who moved.
Attacking with a piece. A non-attacking piece may be tilted over in the direction of an adjacent square that contains a piece. It then becomes an attacking piece, and stops belonging to the player who owned it while it was standing. As with moving, one may not attack with a piece that is already attacking, and one may attack with pieces belonging to either player. Attacking can cause the attacked piece to be captured as described in the capture section below.
Dropping a piece. A player who has a piece in hand from a previous capture may drop it into play on any empty square of the board. It comes into play belonging to that player.

Capture:

Attacking pieces can exert force upon their targets in the direction of clockwise or counter clockwise, (or both, or neither.) The type of force depends on the relationship of the colors of the attacking piece and the attacked piece. The attacker exerts 1 unit of clockwise force for each of its constituent pyramids for which the same pyramid's color on the attacked piece is immediately clockwise of that pyramid's color on the diagram below. The converse then applies for counter-clockwise force.

So for example: (see my notation note below)

An RR attacks an RY. It exerts 1 unit of force clockwise.
A BY attacks a YR. It exerts 2 units of force counterclockwise.
An RY attacks a YR. It exerts 1 unit of force in each direction.
A YB attacks another YB. It exerts no force.

If a piece has two units of either type of force upon it, it is captured, and goes to the hand of the player corresponding to the type of force used in the capture. Note that this is not necessarily the same player whose move caused the capture. If a piece has two units each of both types of force on it, it is instead removed from the game entirely after being captured.

After a piece is captured, pieces that were attacking it become standing, and belong to the player who made the move that caused it to be captured.

Winning the game:

The game ends when there is a color for which a player owns less than two pieces containing it. Pieces in hand do not count. This player then loses the game. If a move would cause both players to lose simultaneously, the player who made this move loses.

Also, if a player has no legal moves, e loses immediately. This should be fairly rare.

Ko:

Any move that returns the game to a previous state is illegal.

Strategy:

Ideally, you will want to try to capture your opponent's pieces with other of your opponent's pieces, because even if the attack fails, it allows you to convert a piece by attacking with it and then removing the attack. Attacking with your own pieces would likewise be dangerous unless you are sure the attack would succeed. Although you normally won't want to send pieces to your opponent's hand it may be a good play when the only alternative is to allow the other player to capture the piece *and* get the attackers. Or when it wins the game of course.

A piece in hand is probably more valuable than one on the board, except when one is close to losing, because it cannot be captured or made to attack.

Monochromatic pieces are worth less than dichromatic pieces, because they only count toward keeping one alive in one color.

Tactically, you have to think of desirable moves using all of the colors, because you don't know which will be available to you. At the same time, you can keep your opponent from making undesired moves by using the colors the opponent would want to use. For example: CW attacks a B-Y with a Y-Y. CCW cannot move the B-2, but e can prevent CW from moving the attacked piece and converting the YY by moving a B+R.

Notes on notation and board representation for email play:

To represent a piece on a board in ascii, use the following scheme:

The first character is the initial of the color of the bottom pyramid, i.e. one of "R", "Y", or "B".
The second character is:
- "+", if it is standing, and belongs to Clockwise,
- "-", if it is standing, and belongs to Counter-clockwise, or
- "^", ">", "v", or "<", if it is attacking in the directions of north, east, south, or west respectively.
The final character is the initial of the color of the top pyramid.

When referring to a piece in hand or to a type of piece generically, the middle character can be left out.

Here is the initial board setup in this ascii representation

    a   b   c   d   e   f
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
6 |R+B|   |Y+B|   |B+B|   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
5 |   |B-R|   |R-R|   |Y-R|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
4 |R+R|   |Y+R|   |B+R|   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
3 |   |B-Y|   |R-Y|   |Y-Y|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
2 |R+Y|   |Y+Y|   |B+Y|   |
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+
1 |   |B-B|   |R-B|   |Y-B|
  +---+---+---+---+---+---+

Notation for moves is similar to algebraic chess notation. For moving a piece, use the initial position followed by a "-" followed by the final position. If the move causes other pieces to become standing, follow this with the positions of these pieces separated by commas, each followed by a "+" if it becomes a clockwise piece, or a "-" if it becomes a counter-clockwise piece, e.g. c3-c2, b3+, d3+.

For a non-capturing attack use a ">" in place of the dash, e.g. b4>c4, would denote a piece at b4 attacking a piece at c4.

For a capturing attack, use a "x" instead of a ">" and append a "+" if the piece goes to clockwise's hand, a "-" if it goes to counterclockwise's hand, or a "0" if the piece is removed form the game. Then follow with the positions of pieces other than the attacker that become standing after the attack, using "+" or "-" just as it is done for pieces that become standing after a piece moves, e.g. e5xf5-, f6+, f4+.

Drops are notated by the piece type, followed by a "*" followed by the position of the drop, e.g. RY*a2.

Other random thoughts:

Optionally, you can allow players with more than one stack in hand to rearrange the stacks before dropping them, as long as smaller pyramids remain on top of larger ones. This rule requires using uniform sized stacks for pieces. (You could try this without uniform stack sizes, but the results might be a little unpredictable.)

Nothing in the core rules requires the board to be a square grid; other boards may be interesting or play better, I chose the square grid for its familiarity, which I thought was important because the game is otherwise so unfamiliar.

It should be fairly simple to use all four colors instead of 3, on a 7x7 board. To do this with uniform sized stacks would require 3 Icehouse sets. With mixed stack sizes and using single pyramids as a substitute for monochromatic stacks, it is possible to use only one Icehouse set. Of course, it still remains to be determined what would be a good opening setup for that game, but it may turn out to be possible to make something better than the 3 color game.

See other games I have created, or return to my home page.
Please send comments and suggestions to: Alexandre Owen Muñiz