RicOlie_2 said:
I think the set-up works well, but that game ended rather quickly. I messed up my first few moves and wasted moves trying to get in a more favourable position. Meanwhile, you got your pieces ready to go and I wasn't able to make a comeback.
Forgive the block quoting. I'm not a fan of it, but there are times when it's best to address various points bit by bit. I am starting to think this is the part of the game that will always be the weakest, no matter what we do. In the beginning there are relatively few options. It's hard to know how best to maneuver your pieces and initiate the first exchange without coming out the loser. I still don't have a solution to this, and maybe there is none. That might be just the part where players struggle the most till they find a way to poke at each other.
I still enjoyed it, except for the last few turns, but I had few options. Maybe it's just because the game was short, but it seemed to me that fewer pieces ended up promoting. It might also have seemed that way because we could only drop pieces with their demoted side facing up and pieces only promoted once. Even so, there were few captures during that game which made it less exciting than some games we've played.
True, there were fewer captures, so I see what you are saying. The first game was definitely more exciting. I wonder if that's not necessarily a flaw of this setup, but rather just a different game. I want this game to be similar in length to games like Micro and Mini Shogi. So I don't really need a long game. Just one that is challenging. This was, I felt, pretty challenging, and though not as challenging as others, it may have just been the way this game played out and not the setup itself.
I found the game more interesting with more promotions so maybe we should revert to the old promotion rules but still allow only the weaker values to be dropped onto the board. What do you think? Do you think the game would be more interesting if we did that?
But considering what I just said, you may be right, it may be best to go back to the alternating promotion/demotion. That was one of the interesting challenges of our first game, as I would find I could drop a piece with an advantageous face up, but the moment I made a capture, I lost my advantage and it became a burden, as I often found myself trying to defend that piece only so it wouldn't fall into your hands. Part of the problem of that first game was how often pieces got stuck, especially after a demotion. But we've adjusted all the starting pieces so that, aside from the pawn, everything has at least a small backward movement. The lack of backward movement is partly why I wanted permanent promotions. But since they now can move backwards as well, even in their weak states, I agree, we should reintroduce the alternate promotion/demotion.
I also think that the FS/B should be stuck behind more pieces (maybe switch it with the RC/SC) at the beginning. With the current set-up it can be moved into play quite early in the game and is able to cover a significant portion of the board. If used effectively it can do a lot of damage. Once a player has both of them, like this game, the other player is suddenly very limited in what they can do since they can cover so much of the board at one time. I had a poor defense, so maybe it was just bad planning on my part, but I don't like how it dominated the game.
I have no problem with trying it that way. I was kind of proud of the defense I used, where I placed the pawn in front of your RC so that if you captured it, it would become a cannon, which would have been ineffective in defending a particular piece. But that's neither here nor there. In any case, we can exchange their positions. The cannon was a fun piece that first game, so putting the RC more in the front might give it more opportunity to come out.
Other than that, I enjoyed the first twenty turns or so and I could have gotten quite far if you had dropped the second FS/B onto the board just a few turns later. On the whole, I think the game works pretty well, and had I planned better, I probably would have done better in the end. That being said, I still think we should switch the FS/B with the RC/SC to make it even more enjoyable. :)
I think you could have done a little better in the end as well. But I agree with your suggestion as well. That said, feel free to make the first move, with those two pieces switched and the alternating promotion/demotion rules.
