Talk:Invaders of Mars

As written, the rules are prone to stalemates where the queen bounces back and forth between uninfected Martians. My suggestion is to force queens to jump on infected Martians if possible when there are no pawns left. The same goes when you run out of black drones, move the queen to one of those if possible. Aside from making the game work, it also fits well with the theme. - brilk 18:19, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. We played this twice on Halloween and didn't notice the stalemate issue. Then again, perhaps we were overly cut throat in forcing queens onto the board. As we are playing this again this weekend, I'll have to see if we run into this issue. Were you playing two or four players?

--nihilvor 23:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I only played this two player. If we both tried not to let any of our guys get taken off the board the games always stalemated. I think most people try to upgrade aliens quickly, though, since I haven't seen anyone else mention the problem. - brilk 23:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Since you are required to attack players, and you are required to attack yourself, if possible, I'm having trouble visualizing the stalemate situation. I'll see if it happens to us with our next game. Did it occur when before any of your players were made into queens, or was it more of an endgame problem?

--nihilvor 01:56, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Both problems happen before a queen shows up and the pawn problem happens before a black drone shows up. Both players keep attacking their uninfected guys. Since there aren't any pawns left, nothing happens. The only way to stop the cycle is to let one of your guys die which is, in every situation I've seen, a bad play. The same thing can happen when you run out of black drones and the queen bounces between infected Martian drones.

- brilk 03:11, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

"Since you are required to attack players, and you are required to attack yourself, if possible,"

I just noticed that you might mean you can attack your opponent on your turn if your guys aren't legal targets. You actually can only attack yourself. The only legal targets for a queen on your turn are your guys, an alien drone, or another queen. All a queen can do apart from those is pass. Ignore this response if you already know all that.

- brilk 03:18, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

So you've managed to avoid getting to the drone stage then? Your rule then would provide an end to any stalemate. I agree that it's the best course of action to keep the game fun and playable.

--nihilvor 05:48, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I just played this again and noticed the problem right away. It seems that most players would run into this as soon as they figure out how easy it is to keep getting your pieces in front of the queen as soon as she is out of babies. I noticed what was happening before my opponent did, so I quietly adjusted my play. Players should, as Brilk suggested, have the queen seek out the drones when possible, instead of landing on players pieces when no babies are left. If she isn't ovulating, then her interest would become the drones anyway. I think it's safe to say that running out of drones would be an issue though, as there would be enough queens on the board by then, but it might be a problem on some rare occasion. I suppose, seconding the rule, it would be safe enough to put a note on the rule sheet, but for now it's a link to an external site.

--nihilvor 06:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)