Timothy Hunt wrote:
I'm also not sure *how* Jake Davenport came up with the shotgunning
strategy, and I would love to know how it came about.
OK. I came up with it after playing the snowball strategy in 1994 and
being unsatisfied with it. Really, the strength of the game is
overicing, and I don't know if John just added that rule to stop people
from just attacking one piece over and over, but it has this really cool
consequence.
I played around with the game on my own and figured out I could use
overicing, as long as I had a large prisoner, to make all my pieces
safe. I have two talents that make Icehouse easier for me, namely very
good spacial relationship ability, and quick decision making. I like to
restructure attacks, and do it quickly.
But I could only do this if I had enough space around my defenders, so I
didn't want them in the snowball. I assumed that other players would
imitate this, and thus my attackers were at risk, but not my defenders,
so I made three strategy decisions. One, don't attack anything, two,
get a prisoner, and three, don't snowball. I played this strategy in
1996. In the first few games, people traded prisoners with me and I was
able to get near-perfect scores, wasting lots of people's attackers.
People were used to a prisoner just making one attack restructured, but
not all of them. As such, in later games, people were afraid to attack
me at all.
In 1998, I realized that nobody will give me a prisoner, so I went on a
rampage to put someone in the Icehouse, which is a hard way to get
prisoners. My favorite game of all time was the one where I put all
four players, including myself, into the Icehouse. Whee!
When I teach people how to play better, which seems to happen every year
I'm at Origins, I suggest this exercise. First, play eight yellow
defenders (four medium and four large) scattered with about four inches
between them. Then take a stash of red pieces and quickly ice them
all. Ice them without crashing, with the tips nice and close, and
minimally (no extra attacker points, you should have a medium left
over). This practices moving fast and precisely on an attack, a skill
that is always valuable. Then take exactly one large green piece and
use it to restructure all the attacks, ending with the green piece
successful. This practices restructuring attacks, and assumes that the
green player gave you the prisoner on the agreement that you'd not
squander it.
Now, how to restructure all those attacks is the fun part. I already
knew about the 2-for-1 exchange, the ice trap, tip blocking, and the
forced retreat. I use all of these in combination. Regularly I force
retreats so that the retreater tip blocks a previous retreater, which
sets up a nice ice trap. Retreat the right pieces in the right way, and
you can do a 2-for-1 exchange or even better. If you have two large
defenders near each other, both iced, you may be able to point all four
of the attackers with their attacking lines intersecting at one point,
and then just pop one of your small pieces in front of all of them,
collecting the three new prisoners in a 4-for-1 deal.
Speaking of which, because of the 2-for-1 exchange, I don't play my
small pieces down as defenders until near the end, because they are so
important for the 2-for-1 deal. My initial defenders, as in the
practice session above, are all mediums and larges. This is another
reason to avoid the snowball: people tend to put their small pieces into
the snowball, and I would rather save them. Yeah, if you set up a
fortress, I might pop mine inside it, but usually it will pay better on
the outside.
Of course, the 2-for-1 deal only works if done quickly, because somebody
will try to pop their own small piece in front and pick up the
prisoners. The best way to do it is to have attackers of several
colors. If I'm doing a 2-for-1 with two large pieces, one red and one
green, neither the red nor green player will benefit from putting a
small in front of those two pieces. I just need to be faster than the
blue player.
So all of my restructuring ideas came from extending the strategies I
already knew about and practicing them. Icehouse is not as deep as
chess, and I'd be surprised if anyone found strategies at this point
that were previously unknown. But that would be fun if it happened.
Questions?