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Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

paper-tactics.com

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#61

Well this is very addictive, thank you for sharing. If you're looking for feature requests then the ability to view move history (especially after the game is over) and the ability to share completed games would be nice. I see a game ID but it's not clear to me I can do anything with it.

Good suggestions, thanks! The only purpose of the ID for now is to allow people to verify that they are matched by checking that the IDs are equal on both sides.

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#64

A pen-and-paper game, and yet all I get is "This web application requires JavaScript to run." I'm sure there's some kind of interactive demo or something, but do the rules themselves need JS?

The rules don't need JS, I should have probably server-side-rendered them, sorry.

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#65
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bot is not very good, unfortunately. It's mainly useful to help understand the rules, as in your case. If you're interested in playing with an experienced player, ping me at nazar@vinnich.uk :) > Which is the standard lenght of the turns? The usual setup is a 10×10 grid with 3 moves per turn. More moves means more interesting manoevres are possible. I like 7 moves on 12×12.

I'd say the bot is very weak. My first game I had no real idea what I was doing. Half the game I thought I had to maintain contact with my starting square or lose, until I managed to wall in my opponents starting square and didn't win. Then I tried to make as many walls as I could because I didnt like my pieces being captured and walls seemed more solid. Suddenly it said I won and I was like wait how, turns out I had…

Yes, very weak is probably a better description. I haven't learnt the theory behind AI opponents properly yet, so this bot is essentially a weighted random choice.

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#66
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read the first paragraph and then decided I wanted to play and I still beat the bot first try. At least that means the game rules are fairly discoverable :)

I didn't understand the rules until most of the way through the game and I still won against the bot. I'm not clear if its really doing anything better than playing randomly based on that.

It's a weighted random choice, so a bit better than randomly because of the weights, but not much better.

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#68
I don't understand the capturing mechanic? Playing against the bot always leads to sudden capture of dozens of units at once.

How and why does this happen? Are you able to surround units or get bonus turns for walling a unit?

The Learn page is a little unclear on this.

Re: Show HN: Play a pen-and-paper game that is almost unknown in the US and Europe

#70

I don't understand the capturing mechanic? Playing against the bot always leads to sudden capture of dozens of units at once. How and why does this happen? Are you able to surround units or get bonus turns for walling a unit? The Learn page is a little unclear on this.

It took me a few goes to work it out. The key - which is mentioned in the docs but IMO not clearly enough - is that one of your active units must be adjacent to a run of walls in order to make those walls active.
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