My perspective is as someone who has read the rules, studied the strategy
guides and followed the discussion of the various tournaments with great
interest, but never played the game. I would be fascinated to see a
"training video".
It seems clear that this is a game that you "learn by doing". That being
the case, I have not attempted to teach it yet. However, I am encouraged by
the success I had teaching and playing my first games of IceTowers recently.
If those I taught showed interest, that would be my group of Icehouse guinea
pigs. . .
Until then, I'll keep my eyes open for an opportunity to play with veterans.
The summer is my busiest season (although working full-time for a summer
camp is busy year 'round, believe it or not) so the big gaming Cons are out.
Perhaps we can arrange someting at the NY Comicon in April? Long way to go
until then, however.
a
----- Original Message -----
From: "Timothy Hunt" <games@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jazzfish@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Icehouse Discussion List"
<icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: [Icehouse] Icehouse Rules video
I learned from the printed rules, um, probably ten years ago now. So,
well
before the version in PwP. I think that makes me and Eric Zuckerman
almost
the only self-taught IIT competitors.
I learned from the printed rules too, originally. Though having them
clarified and in use in examples by someone who understood the game
helped a lot. But my first few games, were largely "meh".
The thing is, it's not really the *rules* that are the problem, but
the *strategy*.
Just like in chess, it's relatively easy to state the rules: (Here's
the set up, here are the 6 different pieces and they each move like
this, the object is to put the opponent's king under an attack such
that it cannot escape from being attacked). But there are a lot of
principles of strategy that can be taught, and would take someone who
only knew the rules a lot of time to learn from scratch. IN fact, I
would hazard a confident guess that no current Grand Masters have
learnt just the rules and then figured out everything else for
themselves. Simple things like the Pin, the Fork, and endgame
practicalities (such as how to win with King and Rook on King) are
simple to learn but may be not entirely obvious just from the rules.
In the same way, some of the features of Icehouse (fortressing,
snowballing, restructuring, shotgunning, sharing the pain) come out of
playing the game, and seeing what happens. To be perfectly honest,
I'm not sure which of the strategies like fortressing and
restructuring were already in mind when the game was created. I'm
also not sure *how* Jake Davenport came up with the shotgunning
strategy, and I would love to know how it came about.
In any case, my point is, Icehouse is far more about understanding
strategy than understanding just the rules.
Timothy
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