Talk:Latent Binaries
Add topicThe idea came to me when noticing that two pawns fit nicely under a queen, and then realizing that I hadn't seen this feature utilized in a pyramid game.
I plan on playtesting this in the next day or two, so there may be some tweaking of the rules. However, I don't expect that the design will require significant revisions.
To do: Edit the diagram so that it better indicates the mobility of the goal pieces.
Played a few games. The guess-and-eliminate mechanism seems to go a little slowly. What do you think about the idea of continuing the challenge as long as it's correct? I.e. If you guess a color correctly, you get an immediate opportunity to guess the second color. If you guess a second color correctly, you get an immediate opportunity to guess sequence. If you guess sequence correctly, the piece is removed. --Carthoris 00:49, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for trying it out. I haven't even had the chance to play this yet! I like your idea, and I see that as a probable improvement. At the very least, I will change the rules to reflect a second guess if the first guess is correct. I'll try it that way, and with the edition of allowing a guess at the sequence challenge as well (whether it works depends on if I want to leave the game more open for more defensive play, as players might better hide their wounded nests from exposed spaces if luck isn't rewarded too much).
The other thing that we'll be playtesting/considering is changing the way the goals are allowed to be moved, to allow them to use any of the spaces at the ends of the board, as long as they are side by side.--nihilvor 04:52, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think allowing one goal piece to hop over the other all along the edge of the board might be an improvement. The current constraint makes moving the goal feel a little futile. --Carthoris 20:35, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
I finally played my game today! I thought for sure that I'd beat everyone to playing it and have the mechanics ironed out. We played it with Carthoris's above suggestion. I'm going to allow that on every turn except the first; that way players can anticipate things a little better and nobody starts to run away with it from the start. We also played it with my goal suggestion of moving them across the goal rows. I suspected that would work better from the start, but wanted to be certain. I'll post the new rules shortly.
Overall, the game was more fun than I expected--a good combination of luck, strategy, and deduction. I'm looking forward to playing again soon.
I realized that there was some ambiguity in the rules. You aren't supposed to use the black or white pawns, and I hope that Carthoris guessed at that. --nihilvor 23:16, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
- Yeah, it specified translucent pawns in the queens, didn't it? That is how we played anyhow. We also hid our two leftover pawns (beyond the two "guessing pawns" of each color) so as to avoid giving each other clues. --Carthoris 04:42, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
- Well, it was inferred that only the translucent pawns were used, but it was not worded well enough to avoid potential ambiguity. I played with all of the leftover pawns being guessing pawns. We had them lined up so both players could see them and added each pawn from captured nests. This way, you can estimate your chances of, for example, the remaining purple pawn being under a given remaining nest. Limiting the information in the guessing stashes is an interesting variant (a bit devious), but having the information available was one of the reasons why I didn't just have players use the unused drones as guessing markers.
- One of the nice things about the new way of moving the goal markers is that it is indeed possible to stay in the game with only two nests (for a little while at least), if your opponent is similarly hampered. I hope it works well for you too, and thank you for the good feedback!--nihilvor 05:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)