Elevation
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Revision as of 10:10, 2 August 2013 by SteveBaker (Talk | contribs)
The game is played on a 6x6 grid with 'terrain' tiles stacked on every square. The 'board' is the inside of the box that the game comes in. Each player has six pieces: Two fish, two dragons and two samurai. Players take turns to play. To win, you must capture all of your opponents pieces.
Each turn:
Choose one of your pieces to play with. There are two basic things that every piece can do:
- Dig
- Digging means picking up a terrain tile from any square that is adjacent to the piece you are playing (orthogonally or diagonally) and placing it back onto any unoccupied adjacent square.
- You may not place terrain onto squares that are occupied by another pieces.
- You may not remove terrain from squares that contain an enemy piece.
- It's OK to remove terrain from beneath friendly pieces.
- Move
- The basic move is one square (either orthogonally or diagonally).
- You may not climb up more than one vertical step as you move.
- You can drop down as many vertical steps as needed.
- If you are at least TWO steps higher than an adjacent enemy piece then you can move onto that square and capture it.
- Otherwise, you can only move into vacant squares
A "Basic Move" is to either dig, then move...or...move, then dig.
- The Samurai
- Can only perform a basic move.
- The Fish
- Can either perform a basic move or instead:
- Dig, then move TWO squares - but only diagonally...or...
- Move TWO squares, diagonally - then dig.
- The Dragon
- Can either perform a basic move or instead:
- Dig twice - but not move.
- Move twice - but not dig.
- Move one square but go upwards by two vertical steps instead of one - and not dig.
Game Over
You win if the other player has no pieces left or is unable to make a move. A stalemate (draw) happens when neither player wishes to move - or if you each undo the other player's move three times in a row.
Ideas for additional rules
- Each player gets to move TWO pieces on their turn.
- Undermining is a third option where you may dig a tile from beneath an enemy piece and forgo your right to move on that turn (which prevents you from undermining a piece that's just one vertical step below you and then taking it.
- Maybe make undermining and moving a special power of the samurai piece. This makes it vastly stronger in combat because it only needs a 1 height step advantage to capture the enemy - which kinda fits the picture of a samurai and gives the samurai piece a super-power alongside the others.
- When your piece is on the ocean (at the bottom of the box), you can move to any adjacent square regardless of the height jump. This is a new way to defeat tall towers - but because moving down into a trench when next to a guy on a tall tower is suicidal - you can only usefully do this with Fish and Dragons that can move twice...although piece exchanges are now more likely.
- Make terrain tiles with special powers. Shuffle the tiles upside down so nobody knows what terrain is going to be revealed when they dig...this adds a huge element of chance - and adds a new memory mechanic where you need to remember where that all-important "lava" tile was buried. Interesting possibilities for setting traps for opponents with bad memories!