Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Gnostica Questions

  • FromDale Sheldon <dales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 13 Oct 2009 13:24:40 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Aaron Dalton wrote:

1) [...] Can a 10-spot be turned into any royal, and any royal into any arcana?

Yes.

So royals are all considered to be "11" for GROWing purposes, and Arcanas "12"? And there is no hierarchy between royals or Arcana? (Ie. I can't replace one royal with another or an Arcana with another Arcana?)

It seems you think that when you grow, for instance, a 3, it *must* grow to be a 4. That's wrong. Any spot card (1-10) can grow to ANY royalty card (knight, prince, queen, king). (And in fact can only grow to royalty, so a 3 cannot be grown to a 4, because 3 and 4 are both in the same rank.)

After the opening bidding to determine who goes first, the relative strength of cards (the "value") within the three ranks (spot, royal, major arcana) is meaningless; only the differentiation between the three ranks is considered.

3) In the graphic at the top of the rules page (http://tinyurl.com/jql78), there is a territory connected only diagonally. Since pieces can't be oriented diagonally, I assumed all diagonal connections were ignored. Are cells only diagonally connected to territories wasteland, or void?

There are indeed no diagonal connections; that territory is only connected to wasteland spaces.

By definition, does that not make that territory in the void?

No. By definition, territory is territory. Anything adjacent to territory that isn't territory is wasteland, and anything adjacent to wasteland that isn't territory or wasteland is void.

My understanding is that any piece or territory that finds itself in the void is immediately removed.

Only pieces. Territory can't be void, it's territory! In other words, there's no "root" for territory; each territory, by virtue of being territory, is it's own root; there is no "central" territory that is "more real" than the rest that other territory needs to "connect" to. (Free your mind from its rigid hierarchy!)

So yes, this means you can end up with islands of territory, connected to other territory only by wasteland; or even, only by void!

--
Dale Sheldon
dales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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