On 9/6/06, Tony Vigil <tjvigil66@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
At GenCon, Wizkids demoed a new board game called Oshi. Oshi is a simple yet strategic game of moving your pieces into position to push your opponent's pieces off of the board. The Oshi game board consists of simple 9x9 grid. Each player starts the game with pieces that come in three sizes with point values that match their sizes... 1, 2 and 3. Unfortunately, due to Oshi's board layout and the number of 1 pointers required for each player, the game isn't 100% compatible with the Icehouse game system. Minor modificaitons were required to make it work with standard single color icehouse stashes and typical checker boards.
*snikt rules* Having not played Oshi, I can't comment on how close your port it, but it sounds like a simple and intricate enough game. And now to babble about your optional rules:
1) as your selected piece's movement, you can choose to not move the piece but rather lay it down on it's side pointing left, right, up or down. The piece cannot be pushed in the direction that the piece is pointing.
Is there a rule to stand back up? When you move again? As another turn before you're /allowed/ to move that piece again? This rule is incomplete and begs many questions. (And as a quibble, it makes more sense visually, to me, if they can't be pushed in the direction /opposite/ that they are pointing. It's like the piece is bracing itself against the coming onslaught. Perhaps that would be better written as "cannot be pushed by enemy pieces coming from the direction in which it is pointing.")
2) As your selected piece's movement, you can choose to hop over pieces at the cost of sacrificing one of your other pieces for each piece that you hop over. The total distance your selected piece moves is still limited by the selected piece's point value and you can't land on a space that already contains another piece.
I find myself wondering why you would add this. Every rule makes the game more complex and more inelegant. Does the balance on this rule come out in favor of improving the game over all? My gut says no but, of course, I haven't experimented. Is the sacrificed piece counted as lost for ending the game (I assume yes, but it's not explicitly stated)? Can I get rid of /any/ piece? When you say "[t]he total distance your selected piece moves is still limited by the selected piece's point value" does "selected piece" mean the discarded piece, or the piece that is moving? It seems like the moving piece but then there is no advantage to losing a larger piece, which may be what you're going for, I just want to be clear.
I'd like to hear what you guys think!
And now you have! -- - |) () /\/ How did I come to be so insane about rule specificity? Must be the mathematician in me...