Single Comment

Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Sep 9, 2003 02:07 AM UTC:

In all fairness, you do mention the two things I am dissatisfied with about
my game. At one time, I did change the colors of the Blue pieces to a
lighter shade, but when I was putting things together yesterday, I was
dissatisfied with that color. So I changed it back. The colors of the
board have been based on the colors of the Smess board. But I'll look
into what might be done.

The exit-moves of the Ninny and Yahoo are somewhat kludgy, but so is en
passant. I could have barred them from entering their own Ivory Tower, but
I don't want to violate the spirit of Smess by making some pieces ignore
certain arrows. I tried demoting them to a piece called a Sycophant, but
that didn't work well. I considered placing the arrows so that they
can't enter the Ivory Tower, but this would also prevent them from
entering the opponent's Ivory Tower. So far, exit-moves has been the best
solution I have to keeping the game from becoming too drawish.

Here's an idea I might try. Within their own Ivory Tower, Ninnies and
Yahoos cannot move at all, but they can be pushed by other pieces
belonging to the same side. While this might make for an interesting
variant, it veers away from both Smess and Chinese Chess. It would also
add to the complexity of the ZRF.

Anyway, something had to be done. Ninnies and Yahoos are normally trapped
when inside an Ivory Tower, and letting them inside your tower normally
weakens your attack and increases your defenses so much that the game
becomes very drawish.