Played through this and had some thoughts!
- We assumed that moves are mandatory, but seems ambiguous. Created some interesting situations at the end game where you didn't want to move a walker but had to.
- Flatdog squishing mechanics seemed pretty unclear, and we ended up going with "If piece is in-between flatdog and something else it gets squished". Could be nice to have some pictures to get the idea across as we kept running into corner cases
We also had a last minute upset that involved hopping in between flatdogs for the win. Feels like this has a lot of depth to the strategy that we haven't even touched on :)
Thanks a lot! Yeah, I considered adding illustrations but wanted to get the rulebook out fast. I'll update it with your feedback. For the things you mentioned:
- You're supposed to have to make exactly 2 moves, but of course a piece can move back and forth if one needs to stall.
- You treated the Flatdog squishing as intended; if there's any obstacle behind the pushed unit, it gets squished.
When you mention the upset, do you mean moving directly from one Flatdog to another? As in, did you feel that being able to jump Flatdogs would improve the game despite not being permitted by the rules atm?
"You're supposed to have to make exactly 2 moves, but of course a piece can move back and forth if one needs to stall."
I think the rules state that "the same unit may not take 2 moves in a single turn". I have been playing a bit, and I personally find that the game is more dynamic when you ignore this rule. What was the logic behind it if I may ask?
Also I'm curious, what happens when a player is out of legal moves? Is there some stalemate mechanism? Two possible scenarii where this would happen:
- One player has two remaining walkers in a1 and b1, stuck behind two flatdogs (a2-b3 & c1-d2), one flatdog being pinned down, the other being blocked by the opponent's flatdog(s).
- You could imagine the same scenario with the player being able to move the non-pinned flatdog, but moving it in a way to block its own remaining walkers (for instance from g1-h2 to c1-d2), therefore being out of moves, as it cannot move the flatdog again according to the rule.
(my personal opinion is that a stalemate mechanism could be fun, it would allow players to still keep hope of potentially drawing a losing game)
Would love to have evaluation engines (like Stockfish) for these types of games, it would make it much easier to balance the game, and make sure there are no forced wins from any starting position.