Lichen Chess
So I got to thinking about what sort of game you could make if the pieces were
modular, and each piece could contain fragments belonging to both players. This
is based on a game played by young druids with magical lichen that could make
stones encrusted with it float through the air. But magical lichen is so hard
to find these days. The mechanic of a having a limited number of pieces which
are placed on the board from a store and which must be returned to that store
or cause the player whose store is exhausted to lose is borrowed from Gipf. The
bit about a player losing when e loses a specific piece is borrowed from chess.
Initial Setup:
Eight stones are placed on a rectangular board of 5 by 3 squares as in the
diagram below. Each stone has 8 spaces on which tokens can be placed. Each
player begins with 3 tokens in play on stones as shown, and 20 additional
tokens in hand. The central stone on each side is the kingstone of the
player who starts with a token on that stone.
setup of board at the beginning of the game
Control of Stones:
A stone is controlled by the player with the largest number of tokens on that
stone. When the number of tokens each player has on the stone are equal, the
stone is controlled by neither player. If a player gains control of eir
opponents kingstone, e wins the game.
Order of Play:
Players alternate turns. Each turn consists of two phases, placing a token and
moving a stone.
A token may be placed from one's hand into any empty space on any stone,
regardless of who controls that stone. It is not possible to pass, and avoid
placing a token. If one is out of tokens in hand when it is time to place the
token, one loses immediately.
After placing the token, one may move any stone that one controls to an empty
square in the direction of one of that players tokens on that stone.
Alternatively, one may colonize a stone that lies in the direction of a token
on a stone one controls. This involves placing a token from one's hand to the
same position on the colonized stone as the token on the colonizing stone that
"points to" the colonized stone. If there is already a token of the opposite
color in that position, it is captured, and removed from the game. If there is
already a token of the same color in that position, the colonization cannot be
made.
The stone on the lower left colonizes the stone on the upper right.
At the begining of a player's turn, if that player controls a stone with all 8
positions filled, all of that player's tokens on that stone are returned to eir
hand, and all of eir opponent's tokens on that stone are removed from the game.
Some thoughts:
The gipf-like rules were added on because I was worried that without them the
game could become very boring after the stones were filled up. However they may
complicate things unnecessarily, and there may be a better way to keep the
token composition of the stones dynamic.
My original version of the game had only the 9 central squares. I added the
extra columns because I thought it would be interesting to have stones that
begin neutral, (and also because 3 x 3 is a little small for a chess variant,
even where the state of the individual pieces is very rich in information as it
is here.) However I am worried that the opening (for white), Place
A2(Northeast) A2-colonize-B1 is too strong this way.
I am working on a related variant, which is larger and has "stones" that belong
to only one player in it, but which has more than one kind of token, and allows
drops of tokens from captured pieces onto other pieces.
This is a game, on
Alexandre Muñiz's Web Thing.
This is only a game. If it had been reality it would not have come with
instructions. Send comments to (email removed contact us for address) t.net.
Written by: Alexandre Muñiz.
WWW page created: December 8, 1999.
Last modified: Sunday, April 1, 2012
