ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATETheme of the Month: Correction

Adam Kouzmanoff

Introduction

For the monthly theme “Correction,” I chose to make a two player abstract piece moving game that takes familiar concepts like a square grid playfield and piece capturing, and combines resource management and the ability to use resources to take away your opponent’s moves and/or pieces.

Original Rules

Objective

The objective of the game is to be the first player to reach 3 victory points. You earn victory points by moving your pieces onto your opponent’s back row, or “Home row.”

Setup

Correction is played on a 5x5 grid. Each player has 6 pieces of their color: 4 Pawns, 1 Knight, and 1 Spearman. There should also be a pile of tokens, and 5 other victory point tokens.

Starting the game

Randomly decide which player will be the first player. That player starts the game as the active player, while the other player starts the game with one time token.

Taking a turn

During their turn, the active player will perform two major actions. First, the active player has the option of placing between zero and two of their pieces on their back row, or “Home row.” This action is called spawning. Second, the active player can move the pieces they spawned this turn, or they can move any other piece of theirs on the board.

Spawning

When a player spawns, they may take 1 or 2 unused pieces they have, and place them in empty spots of their choice on their home row. For each piece the active player places, the inactive player gains one time token. Spawning pieces is optional.

Moving

When the active player moves, they take any of their pieces on the board, and they place it in a new legal position according to that piece’s movement rules. If that piece was a piece that was spawned this turn, they may then take another piece that was spawned this turn and move it as well. Moving pieces is optional.

Time tokens & denial

At any time during the game, a player may spend their time tokens to disrupt their opponent’s movement or pieces. Players have two ways they can do this.

Move denial: In response to the active player moving a piece, the inactive player may take one of their time tokens and place it in the space the active player is attempting to move into. That move is now invalid, and the active player must return the moving piece to its original square, and make a different move with that piece. If no valid moves remain, that player must select a different piece to move. This may be performed as many times as the inactive player has tokens to spend.

When a player places a token onto the board to deny a move, the token serves as a reminder that that square is not a valid move this turn. After that move is completed, however, That piece is treated as an empty square for moving pieces into it. The next player to move a piece into that square “recovers” the token in that square, and adds it to their supply of spendable tokens.

Piece denial: At any time, even while a move is being made, or has just been made, any player may spend 3 time tokens to remove an opposing piece from the board. If this is done while the active player is attempting to move a piece (e.g. the piece being moved is destroyed before the move is completed,) then the active player is allowed to select and move a different piece.

Playtest 1Going into the playtest, all three participants were not sure what to expect from a game with such atypical rules. The idea of giving your opponent resources when creating pieces made one of the testers uneasy, and another didn’t like the idea of having their pieces “banished.”Note that while there are two Knights and two Spearmen shown on both sides, they were replacement pieces, and not used in the game.Victory points are the dark beads, while the catseye tokens are the time tokens.

A few turns into the game. An initial concern was that the second player might be too powerful, as having three tokens on the first turn might be unfairly strong.

As the field became more crowded, the question of backwards movement was brought up (it was not referenced in the first rules draft.) It was determined that the knight can move backwards.

The first point is scored by a Spearman. While the Spearman and knight were intended to be more powerful than pawns, the Spearman is frighteningly effective, being able to sprint halfway across the board the turn he arrives, scoring a point if not dealt with immediately.

The board clears up a little, and the other player scores a point.

As tokens pile up on both sides, the second player scores the next point.

Despite extensive blocking and banishing, the second player manages to slip a pawn through, taking a 3-1 victory.

During the first game, it has become apparent that the pointed ends of the pieces are not enough to help distinguish which side the pieces belong to. A quick search for markers ends with color-coded pieces, blue and yellow.

The second game underway, Yellow scores an early point by sprinting past some defenders.

Blue immediately scores again, and pushes through soon after to gain the lead (victory point shown on scoring piece, blue Knight.)

Yellow comes back with a Spearman rush, and low on resources, blue attempts to delay the inevitable with a move denial token.

It doesn’t work, and blue spends too many resources defending, allowing yellow to outpace and win the game, 3-2.

Game 3 of session 1, against a new player (Note the piece movement chart opposite the cameraman.)

The game starts off fairly even, with both players gaining a victory point early on, and neither player allowing the other to amass too many tokens.

Here is a common sight in the games; Yellow is slowed down temporarily by a move denial, and has to choose between spending an additional turn taking out the obstructing token and allowing the blue pawn to score, or playing defense against the blue pawn and potentially losing the time token on the field and/or their Spearman.

Game 3 ends soon after, with blue slowing a yellow pawn just long enough to score with their own Spearman. Game finishes 3-2.

Playtest 1 impressions Spearmen seem too powerful, while pawns are almost

always used defensively to threaten two squares. Additionally, a defensively spawned Spearman can spawn in and attack a piece halfway across the board, shutting down a lot of offenses.

Movement was not initially defined as mandatory or optional. Since some situations have few pieces on the board, and it may force a player to make a clearly stupid move, movement was ruled as optional mid-session.

While move denial seemed to be used fairly often, it was not nearly as powerful as banishing pieces. Using the 3 token ability to remove pieces from the board was integral in approaching the enemy home row.

Iteration 2 changes In an attempt to make move denial more

powerful and normalize the strength of all the pieces, time tokens placed on the board are now always an obstruction for Spearmen and Knights. Pawns must be used to remove them from the board (and earn the token.)

To keep Spearmen from scoring in one unopposed turn after they spawn, spearmen can only move a second space if they are capturing an enemy piece. To compensate for their now-poor movement options, spearmen are given left and right orthogonal movement.

From iteration 1 to iteration 2, the main changes were the permanency of time tokens placed on the board, and the changes in the Spearman’s movement. Pictured here are the differing piece movement charts, iteration 1 on the left, and iteration 2 on the right.

Playtest 2

With a new piece movement chart (on the left) to reflect the updated rules, and a nice orange quilt to play the game on, playtest 2 begins.

With the Knight’s erratic movement, it seems to be the new scoring piece. However, the requirement of three lateral spaces to move the Knight means that his potential for movement is completely dependent on which space he is spawned in.

The new rules for the move denial tokens prove incredibly useful. Here, a blue Spearman is stuck due to his inability to move into the token, and his inability to capture sideways.

With the spearman still stuck, blue manages to sneak a Knight through yellow’s defenses for another point.

After spending the majority of the game stuck behind a token, the Spearman is eventually freed and moves in for the final point. Blue wins, 3-2.

Session 2 game 2 changes venue, returning to the boring white tablecloth. It starts off with a pretty heated stalemate, where both players keep their pieces guarded.

Game 2 lasts a ridiculously long time. At least one hour passes without either player scoring. Since both players in this particular game are well versed in chess, and have appeared to grasp the basic strategy of the game, the game remains tight. Yellow eventually scores when blue makes a play mistake, and the game is mutually ended, 1-0.

Playtest 2 impressions

The map is starting to feel small. Knights have a tough time maneuvering.

If both players are playing cautiously, the games can last a significant amount of time, and feel like a fruitless “tug of war,” until one player makes a mistake.

The rules on when a player can banish pieces seem loose, and banishing them right before you make a move seems like the obvious choice (unless you’re reacting to a piece you just moved getting captured.)

Iteration 3 changes With obstructions staying on the map, and Knights only having one or two

possible spawn configurations, the map could stand to be a little larger. Banishing a piece at the beginning of your turn can almost completely

negate your opponent’s last turn. It’s decided that it makes more sense to have banishing a piece be a reaction that a player can perform when their opponent moves. That way, the player who loses their piece may move a different piece when they lose one.

Knights are a little too difficult to move around. In chess, knights can move to any space on the board because of their ability to mix lateral moves with forward/backward moves. Since you can’t always move the knight in a forward L shape, it’s suggested to allow the knight to make a forward diagonal move (but not capture) similar to the spearman’s lateral move.

In an attempt to shorten games and prevent stalemate situations where pieces are continually spawned and captured by both players, the win condition is lowered to 2 victory points. Additionally, when players have a piece captured, they cannot spawn it on their next spawn phase.

Pictured below and on the next slide are the main changes to the terrain and flowchart between iterations 2 and 3. The main differences are the changes to the Knight’s movement, and the changes to timing on the piece denial/banishment mechanic.

Playtest 3

Playtest 3 was shorter, and done primarily to verify changes made to the map size and knight movement.

Pictured are the final piece movement diagrams. Solid black dots are movement into empty squares, while small starbursts denote squares the piece can attack into.

The new Knights prove to be fairly powerful due to their movement options, but they can easily get stuck without a Pawn to clear out the denial tokens.

While the game lasted a significant amount of time, it remained more reasonable than game 2 of playtest 2, and blue eventually managed to horde enough tokens to banish several pieces and end the game soon after this turn (final score, 2-1.)