New games

Several great new games on LG recently. Thank you, Richard! I was thinking the other day, all that is missing on LG now in terms of the traditional families of combinatorial games is a mancala game. The standard two-rank game, Wari or Oware, or wharever it is called,  is playable  on many sites already.  But wouldn't it be great to get one of the high-end four-rank mancalas on LG, like Bao or Mweso? These games are nowhere available to play online.  Just an idea.... Finding the time to play all these games is another matter.

Abalone ! (-;

Not to mention finding time to implement them :)

Quoridor ! !!

:)

Abalone and Quoridor, okay :P

Abalone would be great (-:, some interesting variants of the rules could be tested...

Backgammon won a new game survey at this site quite some time ago, I think that would be a very nice addition.

Quoridor on 11x11 !

A mancala game would be great: first Oware, later a more complex game.

Cam (or Camelot)

Another stacking game: Focus, bashni, Emergo, or Laska.

I can certainly can endorse Emergo, but I fear that the community may not be quite ready to appreciate its beauty. Its tactics might appear too baffling and beyond any taming by the human mind. Which is almost true in a way because tactical implications in certain positions run deeper than even the expert player can follow through.

If Dameo manages to find a following however, then maybe Emego might be worthy of consideration.

Regarding your other suggestions, Focus is a totally different kind of game - a stacking game, but not part of the 'extended' checkers family.  I would caution against Lasca. Bashni is, I must admit, great fun.

Atax, Anti-reversi 10x10, Empaminondas, Flume, Phutball, Surakarta, Tanbo, Kalah, Hexxagon,  "Cribbage and pente" my favorit games

Ataxx is great.

i would definitely love to see phutball

Phutball and Trax.

... and Arimaa... :D

Thanks for new games! Quite some of them appeared in past year, very nice.

Still asking is easy :) and many people find many games to ask. So I'll one.

Just recently I learned about game unlur (havent played), it seems interesting, as it is asymetric, though it is quite simlar to havannah which is already present, so possibly it wouldn't be too hard to adapt/reuse havannahs code and have unlur too!

I tried unlur only once but it seems very challenging ! !!

The asymetrical aspect is interesting :)

I would love to see it here. ..

Yes, Unlur is a great concept. But there are so many. Chase would be good fit for LG.

Actually, I think you're right about the mancala games. I like Oware, but it is available everywhere. And there is really no online versions of any of the more complex mancala games except Toğızqumalaq. Bao has major player communities in East Africa, available rules and descriptions, regional game associations, but the closest thing I could find to online play is a site which organizes PBEM tournaments ( http://www.kibao.org ).

I think the main considerations should be, in no order:

1. Redundancy (the lack thereof) - somewhat self-explanatory, though must be balanced against the next one.

2. Player base - will this be a net gain of users to the site, or just redistribute the present users time? The former being preferable.

3. Compatibility - Arimaa, for example, is a really cool game but would necessitate eight (!) inputs per turn. Granted some of the word games and draughts rival that, but only some of the time, and usually as a sort of reward, i.e. if you need to make eight inputs in draughts you just did something really cool.

What's wrong with having eight inputs per turn? Polyomino very commonly has five per turn; if it's such a great game, no doubt people would play it.

I also see number of inputs like a bit of a weak argument. People even play (and I did for some time) comercial board games on line, like puerto rico, agricola and similar. And there are a lot of actions there, and that is of little problem. (though some games like puerto rico, have something what I would consider "interleaving" actions and that could be a bit annoying with turn based play (though I again I played turn based and it was ok), and especially when time limit is present. In any case it seems unarranted worry.

Speaking of weird turns, some simultaneous move games would be increadibly interesting, though I do not know many such games, only commercial like 6takes and 7 wonders.

I don't mind numerous inputs as a general rule, e.g. they're fine on the arimaa.com client, but I find them severely annoying here where each input requires a full refresh of the page. You mention Polyomino and I actually love that game but the input thing is the reason I don't play it here. But clearly I am in a very small minority (possibly consisting of only me), so I guess I was off the mark on that criterion.

Speaking of good games that may be a bad fit for the format, I think a "Risk-like" would be a strong attraction, where the term perhaps means something other than a strict clone of Risk.

While we're all having our say, Chinese Chess and Backgammon are the games I'd most like to see on here

littlegolem is mostly Abstract Strategy

more Modern than Traditional

more Pure than Chance

Searched for "Two player pure modern abstract strategy board games"

Stratego          war game, maybe to save time have last setup saved (and edit by swapping pieces)

YINSH              hexagonal reversi type game with rings

GIPF                 hexagonal pushing and matching

For those of us who have been on the site for a while its clear that the number of active players has declined (please correct me if I am wrong Richard). Obviously one way to bring more players to the site is by increasing the number and types of games. However I think it is important that things are done slowly. There is a genuine risk that  a similar number of players will be spread over a larger number of games, making playing existing games less fun. If people really want to add games more quickly, maybe we should have the other discussion, which games should be removed. Alternatively, it might be good to drop some of the low interest variants.

Now that you mention it, I see a similar development at iGGC. LG is turn based which may be an advantage in this respect. Or not, I don't know.

But I agree with your argument and I also think we should appreciate Richard's efforts and the time he already invests in the site, and maybe temper our demands a bit. :)

I think some not popular games/variants could have removed infinity but I strongly oppose removing games. We still can have plenty of variants to play in "Rating games" and "User Tournaments".

Comparison with igGameCenter isn't good because "correspondence" format hugely help find opponent.

CANNON

Veletas

Hnefetafl

Has anyone here tried cannon?

to Clarck: I have read the rules. Can you explain why Cannon is cool game?

sorry 'Clark'

Cannon is one of my favorite abstract games.  There are three general concepts about the game that I really enjoy.

1. The goal of the game is  too capture the town. On your first move you decide where to place it.  This is a huge factor in replayability as, different town placements really impact on strategies.

2.With the exception of cannon and retreat moves, soldiers must move forwards. This promotes aggressive gameplay and prevents draws (I havent seen a draw yet) .

3. Cannons are a very unique idea. They're movement , firepower and how they are "built" are all ideas that i haven't seen before.

Gameplay is a rewarding experience . Some players attack by forming  well placed cannons while others mass groups of soldiers. Cannon feels like it was invented 1000's of years ago, with its smooth movement and clarity despite being invented in 2003.

In my opinion, the other games in the poll where Draughts was introduced in were quite interesting. I'm especially curious about the (something) poker game.

@clark  thanks

Mancala (oware) would be great!

If a Mancala game then I would strongly suggest Toguz  Kumalak. It is probably the deepest Mancala game with an incredibly large player base. If you check iggamecenter you will see that it's the most played game there by a wide margin. it really deserves a site where one can play turn-based.

Yeah, Toguz Kumalak is a real dense game, but it may "scare" people due to its complexity. Maybe Bao would be just the job!

Toguz Kumalak has a very easy ruleset, you just have to recognize if a pit contains an even or odd number of beans.

In comparison to that Bao has a quite complex ruleset, which is not so easy to understand for beginners.

Wow, I've looked at iggc stats:

http://www.iggamecenter.com/stats/topplayed30.html

and I'm amazed that Toguz Kumalak has 4792 plays while the next game has 64.

Yes, as I said the player base is very large, the rules are very easy, there is organized professional play in Kasachstan and Kyrgisistan, so everything speaks for creating a turn-based platform for Toguz Kumalak.

iggc had to create a special server for Toguz to handle the amount of plays...

Hum, I'll check that out, playing some games at iggamecenter just to have a feeling about how it works...anyway, the figures are shocking!!! There is a big community there!

The players there are quite experienced. Don't be surprised if you get some heavy beatings there ;)

Anyone interested in playing : 1. ORDO - an original connection game  2. Epaminondas - a chess-like war game  3. Cannon - a chess-like war game? Please contact Admin asap.

So, we have :

Backgammon, Abalone, Entropy, Shacru, Quoridor, Boku.

The game of Y!

GIPF, Arimaa, Fibonacci, Veletas, ZERTZ, PUNCT.

Yavalath

Вashni, Laska, Fokys.