A variation of havannah I invented - need help analyzing

First off: please don't steal this idea.

My variation is (in a way) a combo of hex and havannah. It takes place on a size 6 havannah board.

 Rules:

- You may place one hexagon anywhere on the board

- First to connect 2 opposite sides OR 3 sides that are equally far away from the center (I don't know a better term to describe this, maybe 3-opposite?)

- The pie rule

©2015 Piqo. All Rights Reserved.

That's it. No more to it.

Questions:

- Does the first (or second) player always win even though the pie rule exists?- Can this game end in a draw?- Does it sound like a boring game???

Thanks!

Piqo

No it does not look boring.

Yes there could be draws (think of one player connecting sides 1-2-3 and the other 4-5-6).

We could play test it here on Havannah boards.

You need to name it, Hax ?

The rules do sound good, but you'll have to play it to see how the game feels.

Do you count the corner cells as parts of the edges?

Yes, corner cells do count as edges.

My dad suggested the name 'honeycomb'. Do you like that?

Carroll, by the way, connecting 1-2-3 edges and 4-5-6 edges wouldn't be a draw because someone has a 2-opposite side connection somewhere in there.

Correction: the corner cells count as BOTH adjacent edges.

I should just note that game rules are not copyrightable, anywhere as far as I know. You can copyright your wording of rules but not rules themselves. And you can not do anything if someone implements your idea, and does not use your assets (text, art etc.). And seeing that you are 14 by your profile page, I'll say this about ideas: They are quite plentifull, and worth way way way less than people think. When making games what is most important is testing and seeing how rules play out, does it make for interesting and balanced game. It is easy to come up with tons of ideas for games, but when you test it turns out to be not that great or not that inovative (that is there is little added value compared to original game, imo most chess variants fall into this very strongly). That said I do not know maybe you tested your version with couple people already (though as you asking does it sound boring, I guess you did not try it?). Also pie rule can only make it so that second player has a wining strategy, not first (well or it is almost always the case). Sorry if this sounds somethat patronizing, but copyright gets on my nerves, and especially in wrong places :).

> Carroll, by the way, connecting 1-2-3 edges and 4-5-6 edges wouldn’t be a draw because someone has a 2-opposite side connection somewhere in there.

I thought opposite sides of a hexagon were 1-4 2-5 3-6 ?

Honeycomb seems a bit generic for a game played on hexagonal grid. I think the name should suggest link to hex or havannah.

Why limit to size 6, greater board should make for interesting games too.

Please invite me to a game.

"3 sides that are equally far away from the center"you mean this kind of thing?:

"Correction: the corner cells count as BOTH adjacent edges."with this i dont see how a draw could be possible.

So, three sides that are equally far away from *each other* ... ? If so, why not call them "three alternate sides"?

Oh yes. Duh. If they were all equally far away from the center that would just be any three sides.Also, I was joking about the copyright. I have read in the past that game rules aren't copyrightable...I tested it out with my friend at school and with both my parents, but none of us knew what we were doing.

That's the main reason why I asked if one side will always win.

In unlur (which has some similarity to this game), the goal is described as connecting "three non-adjacent sides".

Also, draws are not possible in this game since otherwise they would be possible in unlur (and iirc they aren't).

Just a few thoughts...

Generally people do not like the feeling of connection games that can boil down to a "race". It is much more likely that most matches feel "decided" within the first 5 to 10 turns , and because of that such a game is likely to be much harder to balance, even with the pie rule. So then the obvious question is how Havannah gets away with this type of situation. The answer is of course that the other two win conditions provide for "threats" that can make any race occurring in the third condition very complicated (as opposed to just counting the amount of turns).

Now lets see how you game compares to Havannah in this area:

First we notice that each of your win conditions makes the other impossible, while it is easy to just place units on a board so that all three of Havannah's win conditions are met. This could make it so that your win conditions are less likely to provide threats for each other.

Also, it could be important to consider that, if played as the only condition, two of havannah's are draws and one is race. The two drawish conditions each require less units to form than the race condition (both as a minimum, and a tendency during play). While your game has both a race condition and a draw condition, the drawish one requires more units (as a minimum, but it would seem likely as a tendency during play as well). This could also make it less likely for useful threats to be available when races occur.

Now this is little more than a rudimentary analysis. You have to actually test the game a bunch to see if it is fun, and it is still very possible that your idea is actually quite fun. But, you should also look into Cross by Cameron Browne: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/59668/cross

He used the same two conditions as you, but only connecting three non-adjacent sides is a win condition. If you connect two opposing sides, you lose! That way he actually kind of "leverages" the fact that the race-condition is what makes the draw-condition drawish. Of course your idea could still turn out to be interesting too, good luck.