Hi Icehouse Players: As a not-yet-Icehouse player, I really appreciate all the strategy detail you folks are disclosing. I can see clearly that Icehouse is a pretty complex game, and I will have a lot of work to do when I finally decide to figure out how to play. Cheers, Ankhst > > 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? > _______________________________________________ > Icehouse mailing list > Icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.looneylabs.com/mailman/listinfo/icehouse