I agree that Frog Legs is not as good of a game that I thought it would be - I had imagined it as more of a game where you guess & taken chances - but as seen once brought here, the game is boring since there are players who will not take chances - and just "waste" shots - so half the game is just making stupid wasted "safe" shots.
I have gotten a different variant released on http://www.jijbent.nl/ (dutch language site) based on the Frog Legs concept with some changes - which makes it a REALLY fun game.
A slightly different variant is being worked on http://www.brettspielnetz.de/ (german language site) that also deal with getting points when you reveal a number... kind of what joshi tm is talking about I think. [note - not released yet]
Anyway, I'm not sure if Fencer could do this easily (or if he wants to change it), but I think there is one small thing that could be changed with Frog Legs to turn in back into the game which is was meant to be.... and that is where players take more chances and guess more.
Hide from your opponent where you guess at.
Right now, if you guess - you not only lose points - but possible give your opponent information where the frog is - so you end up losing A LOT of points. If the location of where you opponent guessed at stays hidden, I believe it would start to encourage players to start guessing instead of making "dummy" shots.
coan.net: Hide from your opponent where you guess at.
That won't stop people from making "safe" moves. Granted, in some situations when a number other than 0 is shown and there are some unknown neighbours, it's better to guess than to shoot. But since the there's an advantage to guess before your opponent guesses when a number other than 0 is shown, it's better to shoot somewhere knowing where it will reveal a 0 than to shoot somewhere where it may reveal a number other than 0.
But with this proposed variation, it's even more important that squares you've guessed are marked in someway, and we haven't seen guessed squares marked in regular Frog Legs/Finder yet.
AbigailII: In the current version, I agree it would be nice to see where you have guessed at - but not 100% needed since you can see it in the move list. (which a long term request is to make all games be able to be played without having the move list on - but I've given up on that request.)
Anyway, yes - if the guess would be hidden from your opponent, there has to be a way to show you where you guessed at yourself... even though I see Fencer solution would be just hide the wrong guess ? from the move list from your opponent - but would be nice to have it shown on the board.
By hiding the guess from your opponent I think will stop many of the people making "safe" moves - probable not all, but I think it would help out a lot.
coan.net: In the current version, I agree it would be nice to see where you have guessed at - but not 100% needed since you can see it in the move list.
By the same argument, showing a chess or checkers board isn't 100% needed, since you can see the move list; and the move list will determine the position.
AbigailII: Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm 100% for the request of showing guesses on the board. That along with some other minor changes in other games would be great so I don't have to have the move list open at all.
But it does kind of stink that I have to leave the move list open (which slows down page load) because of a few games in which you have to have information from the move list to play the game correctly.
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