Talk:Quintazone-Chaser

I playtested this the other day and had a question as relates to the definition of "zone." The definition of a zone for Quintazone is any connected group of a single element. However, if we use this definition for QC, there are areas where pieces will be trapped because an unconnected, solitary element that is unconnected to another one of its kind is not a zone. Indeed, you you could set up a start card against an isolated element section. The way we played it is that we counted these isolated elements as zones. Because it often was not advantageous to enter an isolated zone (which ver often had few neighboring elements), we made it optional for a player to enter such areas of the board. That seemed to work best. It might also be useful to find a way allow unused pyramids from Quintazone to come on the board, for those players with the fewest pyramids in play. Some players don't like to play a lot of pyramids in Quintazone, though they might rethink that strategy if they know that a game of QC awaits them.

--nihilvor 02:39, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I had meant for isolated panels to function as zones in the Chaser. Actually, that's how I understood it for Qunitazone. Do you play Quintazone so that there must be at least two panels in a zone before you can place a pyramid? I never drew that from the rules. Given that a "set" may have only 1 member, and that every panel is connected to itself, I'm not sure that your reading of the rules is any more accurate than mine.

The second issue is more complicated and interesting. Pondering. --Carthoris 13:45, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that how I interpret "A Zone is a connected set of panels of the same element." To me, it's implied that a "zone" is by definition greater than a single panel, so that it is then constituted as a "set." Thus players have to make connections to then have zones to place pieces in. It played well that way, and I haven't tried it with every element being in itself a zone. With playing it the way I have, however, the placement of pyramids is much more deliberate and slow. Not all of the players played all of their pyramids by the end. That said, if the game is played so that everything is a zone, then you don't run into that noted problem for Quintazone-Chaser since there's no reason not to put your final pyramids down on any open element at the end.--Nihilvor

BTW, a quick fix for playing QC, no matter the way one plays Quintazone is to allow players to play their unplayed pyramids onto elements, one at a time, until no pyramids remain, before starting Quintazone-Chaser. Seems that you would do that before allowing others to decide the starting and finish points. --Nihilvor

I can't figure out what this change would "fix." There doesn't seem to be any problem with playing with the pyramids that went down during the game. It may give a slight disadvantage to the winner of Quinitazone when playing the Chaser, if fewer pyramids = bigger zones. That said, I don't think your suggestion would "break" the game either, and if it appeals to your sense of fairness, you should certainly go for it. --Carthoris 20:19, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. My concern was based upon my interpretation of the original rules. In games played the way I was playing them, there were great disparities between players on how many pyramids were played. You're waiting for a zone to be created and then pouncing on it. With that way of playing, it's much more about careful pyramid play than getting them out there, so the winner, in the last game we played had far fewer played pyramids than I. As the game is now corrected as intended by the designer, I don't see any need to change the rules, as the difference in number of pyramids played will be mostly negligible.--nihilvor 02:12, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I did in fact intend for a Zone to include single-panel "sets" (similar to single-tile features in Carcassonne). I have edited the rules for Quintazone to clarify this. Feel free to add your variant to the page, though! Are there any other changes that should be made, e.g. in the number of pyramids per player? --Dougo 20:37, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up!--nihilvor 03:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)