HOME | DD
CatspawDTP — Astral game rules (color)
Published: 2012-09-19 19:10:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 10157; Favourites: 210; Downloads: 1011
Redirect to original
Description
The rules in full color for Sun and Moon—The Astral Game. The PDF file is set up for US letter size (8.5 inches by 11 inches), and is four pages long. It also can be printed from Adobe Acrobat or Reader as a “booklet” on a single sheet of tabloid paper (11 inches by 17 inches), then folded in half.(I apologize for the bizarre category, but Deviantart steadfastly ignores the existence of any game other than digital games.)
Related content
Comments: 367
I’m afraid I’m not visualizing how that’s possible; I think I’d have to see a diagram.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Actually... wait, the game is literally moon to move and win or draw in one move with the correct deployment. Just threaten every star on the Twilight line except the very top one and use your first move to get a unicorn to the topmost blue star so you control the whole thing. You then just sit there and wait for your opponent to move his pieces so he doesn't threaten a star on the line with any piece, then move unicorns onto the line so that he slowly loses safe space.
As a matter of fact, unicorns are actually invincible save for forks which can only occur when losing an allied piece. As long as you never use any pieces but the unicorns and princess, you can't lose the game.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh, and you could probably fix this by allowing two moves of different pieces per turn, and making one type of piece able to charge across the Twilight Line. Without two moves or some kind of special attack, unicorns can never be captured unless they intentionally allow themselves to be. And the Twilight Line fundamentally doesn't work with a piece that can kill anything that steps onto it without otherwise changing the game situation.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
A possible alternate schema . . .
Unicorn: Move to adjacent star, may then capture opposing soldier on star adjacent to its ending position. Perhaps add rule that it cannot capture on the twilight line unless it too is on the twilight line.
Earth pony: Move up to two stars in any direction, including turning a corner; may capture in conventional manner.
Pegasus: Move up to three stars, but only along an arc without turning corners, may capture in conventional manner. The question then is whether retaining “flyover” rule would affect its relative power.
Thoughts?
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Would limiting the range of a piece help? Another commenter mentioned that as a possibility.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very, very interesting. It's just the kind of game I love to play. I'll give it a shot! But I can't help but feel that this will be a flash game in the very near future. (Assuming you are willing to allow that.)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Please do, and let me know the results! As for digital versions—we’ll see.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems bizarre to me that the Princess can attack as a unicorn. This means that there is literally no way to win the game other than by capturing a piece from your opponent in such a way that you now have two pieces on the same arc to the opposing princess, and with no Twilight Line in the way. There is no way other than capturing an opposing piece that can threaten the opposing Princess with more than one piece at the same time (without her having to have been under threat before making the move), and if only one piece threatens the Princess, she may merely capture it as a unicorn every single time.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
From a world-building point of view, it reflects the identity of the princesses as an amalgam of all three tribes.
Yes, a single piece is vulnerable, much as it is in chess and other games. Trapping a princess requires multiple pieces, arranged in a manner that prevents the princess from escaping even if she captures one. A lot of careful maneuvering is required to “herd” her, in effect. I would not be surprised if “doubling up” emerges as an important strategy to accomplish it, so that even if the “forlorn hope” leading piece is captured, another piece immediately behind it continues the threat.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Here's some alternatives. The princesses can move along an arc on the Twilight Line, but not cross over it, without immediately ending their move. However, the Earth and the parts where the Twilight Line forks at the edge do still stop their movement. They can only capture in a special maneuver where they move off the Earth, over a single soldier, and land on the outer edge of the Twilight Line, if it doesn't cross the opponent's heavenly body. Eclipsing can also occur if, a unicorn threatens your heavenly body while your princess is on the Twilight Line (not including Earth), an earth pony threatens the Earth from your side of the Firmament while your princess is on the Earth, or a pegasus is on the outer edge of the Twilight Line on your side of the Firmament while your princess is on your side of the Firmament (not including heavenly bodies and Twilight line). Each turn you move the princess and one soldier. Now the game has a back and forth dynamic of controlling the Earth like day and night, until you start exerting control on your opponent's side and force their princess to avoid one or more parts of the board.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Interesting concepts, and I may mine some ideas out of them, but I want to minimize special cases and exceptions. I’ve realized only now that’s a hallmark of the classical games I’m looking to for inspiration, and why they feel so self-contained and conceptually elegant.
I’m pondering some alternatives, sparked by some observations regarding movement ranges.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I really want to play this!!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is amazing! I'm looking forward to playing a bit.
One question: think I could get a laminated page of the playing board from a copy place? Do they do that? I have no idea.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It depends on the establishment. I’d recommend going to a full print shop rather than a copy shop; such a business is more likely to have the lamination service you’re looking for. The best thing to do is to call around or check out Web sites first, see which ones will do it, and get prices.
And thanks so much for the compliment! Please let me know how it goes, especially if you discover anything specific worth reporting.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Two questions, both of which I think I know the answer to but still should probably be made clear in the rules:
1) If it is my turn, and any move I make would put my princess in eclipse, but she is not currently in eclipse, is that a loss for me or a draw? (I'm guessing the second, since otherwise I can't think of any way for draws to exist, but the phrasing of the win condition makes it sound like I lose)
2) If I have a piece that is in position to capture the opposing princess, but in doing so it would put my princess in eclipse, does that still count as eclipse? (I presume yes, since I don't imagine the rule against putting yourself in eclipse applies past the end of the game, but the rules do not point that out)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
1. That’s an excellent point! I’ll have to think about that. I don’t have a strong leaning one way or another, and I suspect I need to talk it over with some folks before stating a conclusion.
2. You are correct. Once a player can banish the opposing princess, everything else is moot.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
If this game is anything like chess, or pony chess for that matter. I think you should lose the game if any move you make forces you into eclipse. Their is also the factor that a smart player could realize his mistake and force a draw to protect just from losing. :/
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That’s a reasonable conclusion, and I may go with that in the end.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
So, after reading the rules, I've got one very important question. What's stopping a piece from bum-rushing another piece as soon as it gets in range? Specifically, the Pegasus. What's stopping the other player from capturing it after the other player made it fly over a piece? I don't know if I misinterpreted how it's supposed to work, but the way I understood it implies that flying over may very well be a useless and suicidal ability.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It certainly is one to use with care. There’s nothing to stop a player from capturing a pegasus that just overflew—except, possibly, the rest of the tactical situation, which may present other opportunities, distractions, or problems of greater import. Also, keep in mind that a pegasus can overfly friendly pieces as well as opposing ones.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This looks so awesome! I'm hoping I can talk a few of my friends (who enjoy chess but don't so much enjoy the pony scene) into trying this out with me. Also I'm really tempted to whip up a flash version of this game...only problem is I don't know the strategy enough to build a good AI for a computer player, and i don't know how to do networking to make it an online game. Well...it'll be fun to make anyway. XD
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks so much! I hope you’re successful. If you are, please let me know how it goes, especially if you discover anything specific that’s worth reporting. You might be able to sneak the game past their defenses by playing down the pony-idiom.
Good point about the difficulty of creating an AI player for a brand-new game. I don’t imagine it’ll be possible to amass enough empirical data for a while yet. You’re not the first to suggest an electronic or network version. I don’t have the expertise myself to create one!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This should be made into an iPad App. Obviously Free of course, we don't want any C&D's from Hasbro. Although I wonder if you could sell it to Hasbro maybe? They do make board games, and I'm sure they'd like a game like this for one of their more popular TV shows.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I’m considering it! If I can find a way to discuss it with them, I’d love to do so.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Maybe someone from EQD could hook you up, at least tell someone from Hasbro about it or something. I mean, I've seen even simple flash games get bought for a ton of money. What would be really funny is if you do manage to give it to them, eventually we end up seeing something like Twilight playing it with spike or something.
But yeah, I think that in the meantime something like a flash version or even an App would help it get more popular, after all, not a whole lot of people are gonna go through the trouble of printing out and putting together a full version of the game for themselves. Well, at least not as many people that would be willing to play it in a more convenient electronic form, and as an App it'd just be that much more portable and easy to play with other people. I guarantee you can at least find a guy or two that would be willing to make a flash version. Hell, someone might already be working on it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I plan to look into it soon; we’ll see what happens.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Honest question? The stop before obstacle rule; does that impede the ability of earth ponies and pegasi from capturing? As written that seems to be the case. I mean that the capturing rules indicate that I can stop my earth pony's movement on an enemy soldier; but I must also stop that earth pony right before it hits that soldier, which means that the player who captures first wins and that the game is either a forced win for the first player or a draw.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
No, it doesn’t impede captures. The intent is to establish that two pieces can’t occupy the same star, so a moving piece either has to capture (if it can and the player wishes) or stop before reaching an occupied star. I may rephrase that part of the rules to make it clearer; I couldn’t come up with good phrasing before and I had other fish to fry.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ah ok then. I commend you sir (or madam)! I don't know if you did this on purpose or not (though it seems that you have), but your game is an example of an abstract strategy game that avoids classification under the Strategy Stealing argument. Which is epic.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks very much for the commendation!
No, it wasn’t deliberate—I’ve never heard of the “strategy-stealing” argument or classification before, to tell the truth, but I’ll accept the verdict of it being epic.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This looks really freaking fun. What would you recommend for printing the game itself?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
For my own set I went to the local Kinkos—er, FedExOffice and had the board and playing-piece art printed on label paper. That made it relatively easy to stick the art to a backing without using glue sticks or other messy solutions.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Y’welcome! I hope that proves helpful.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Woah this looks intense!
You must have put alot of time into this, it looks amazing!
Awesome! You've got to post a few matches when you can on youtube! ^_^
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks so much! I did indeed put a lot of time and thought into it. I hadn’t considered the idea of posting videos of matches; I’d be more likely to post written summaries of play, possibly with illustrations of the board conditions. It’s an interesting concept, though I suspect a lot of editing and compression would be needed!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Okay, so I haven't played it yet, but I guess it's theoretically possible to put your own princess (accidentally ?) into eclipse by moving a soldier? What would happen then?
But it looks really interesting.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Huh. That’s a good point; I’ll have to rephrase that sentence to make it clear that a player cannot make any move that would cause her princess to go into eclipse.
As for an unintentional eclipsing, you’re right that the rules don’t address the point at all. If it isn’t discovered immediately, I would say “play it where it lies” and move on. If it is discovered immediately, I’ll have to decide between an immediate forfeit or a penalty—perhaps losing a soldier, similar to the “escape” penalty.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Assuming that soldiers (as per the current rules) still may not directly capture princesses and have to corner them, a simple penalty might be punishment enough as long as the princess could theoretically still escape during her next turn, I guess.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That’s a possibility; I’ll have to ponder on it, I think.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This seems like something that would be fun even with non-bronies. Perhaps an interesting way to introduce people to the fandom; in any case I'd love to print this off and get a game going.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yes indeed! It was designed specifically to be something anyone could enjoy even if he or she was unfamiliar with the program. With suitable substitution of terminology, playing down the MLP-specific idiom, one could sneak it past the defenses of someone who rejects the show.
Have fun with it, and if you discover anything worth reporting, please let me know!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This seems pretty similar to Chess, but different enough to be interesting all the same. I particularly like the tactical issues introduced by the Sun and Moon, how they block movement and attacking. Interestingly, it looks like you could force a stalemate if you started with only four unicorns: simply keep the Princess in the starting position and place each unicorn on one of the other four concentric circular arcs, making sure that the first and last stars of your colour on the outer ring is attackable (this can be achieved by placing a unicorn on the clockwise-most position on the inner circle). Now as soon as the opponent hits the twilight line bordering your firmament, you can attack that piece and still not have moved onto the twilight line yourself (thus forcing you to move your princess). But since in reality you have to place all of your soldiers, the game is more interesting.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
I don't think you could do the stalemate with four unicorns thing. The twilight line also encompasses the border of the board, so you'd need five unicorns and first move to pull it off. Otherwise your opponent could just take the long way around.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That's not true. Everypony must stop on the twilight line, so it is sufficient for every spot on the twilight line dividing the two firmaments, plus two points on the outer border (the closest ones to the enemy firmament but still bordering yours) to be threatened by a unicorn. There are six rings around the earth: one is covered by the princess (a fifth unicorn, if you like), the outer one forms a continuous twilight line and so only needs to be covered at the two points which can be reached from the opponent's side, and the other four can be covered by unicorns. My suggested placement of one unicorn at the clockwise-most point on the inner ring ensures that the two required points on the outer ring are covered, after which the stalemate is achieved by simply moving one of the other three unicorns anywhere on its circle (but not onto the twilight line) each turn, or capturing the last piece to move if the opponent moved a piece onto the twilight line last turn.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Are you sure that "you must stop on the twilight line" means that if I've already got a piece on the twilight line I can only have it move one star in either direction along the arc of the twilight line? I just took it to mean that any path that intersects the twilight line must terminate on the twilight line.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yup, it's actually explicitly stated:
"When a piece moves onto a star on the twilight line, it must halt there and proceed no farther; thus, a piece moving along the twilight line effectively is limited to stopping at the next star."
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
One of the things I was hoping would develop is the possibility of an analog to “fairy chess” —that is, variant versions using different conditions than the standard.
It’s easy to imagine, for instance, altering the number or mix of pieces, or setting up specific “play problems” similar to chess problems.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yes indeed. Naturally the "variant" I just described would be an awful one.
One query, from what I understand it seems as though the potential for a stalemate is much higher than you might find in similar games, in the vanilla (no replacing captured soldiers) version of the game. Is this actually the case?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
<= Prev | | Next =>