Please note, I moved this to an Icetowers thread. Joshua K. wrote: > > I tend to push games to conclusion even if I'm losing, [...] > > Hmm. I'll note that this is actually at odds with what I saw of your > Icetowers strategy (which seemed to involve shaking things up until > you thought you'd done as well as you were going to). Different > games, different philosophies? (or just a real hatred for double-caps? > :) Josh is referring to a sequence of moves I made several times in the Icetowers tournament, where there were several towers with two pieces of the same color at the top, and I split the caps off to the table. I have a real hatred of double-caps on top of large towers. The game is all about taking control of towers, so I don't like to see something that so thoroughly discourages capping. Something that discourages capping also discourages mining, which takes out 2/3 of the game. I'll note that I only pulled this trick when I could split double-caps for all three of my opponents, so I wasn't just giving power to one player to knock down the leader. It's not possible to shake up a game of Martian Chess as throughly as a game of Icetowers, so it is definitely a case of different philosophies. I do encourage players in the Icetowers endgame to cap smaller towers that don't create mining opportunities rather than perpetuate the mining cycle on the larger towers. While we're talking about Icetowers, I need to note something else. I did a lot of talking during Origins about my playing methods, and it seems pretty clear that they way I play, which absolutely crushes games after game of newbies if I'm not careful, is too defensive for tournament play. In three games, my scores were 30, 31, and 30. I'm proud of myself that I can break even in such a pool of sharks, but I clearly need to work some aggression in there if I want to win. -- Elliott C. "Eeyore" Evans eeyore@xxxxxxxx