Nothingness: 6-8 hours will "punish" average movers. And it will even punish one of the players for being in the wrong timezone.

Considering players come from all over the globe, a bonus of at least 24h/move is required to be fair on all players. Regardless of max. pool time. And regardless of the game being played - be it Espionage or anything else.

Nothingness: It sounds terribly quick. Time bonus should be at least 12 hrs raher more.

What would be the optimal time setting for an espionage tourney that woudl promote fast play yet would not punish people for being average movers. i thought about a 10 day limit with 6-8 hours bonus plus a 5 day bank. and no vacation enabled. What does everyone think or suggest?

open small = small fast yes

Nothingness: open small = small fast?

Pedro Martínez: that is the fellowship that i started a while back.

Nothingness: What espionage freaks site?

vote on the espionage freaks stie... for your favorite espionage version

I achieved my 1,100 win the other day.. wow....ithink i had close to 1500 on IYT

or we could use the grey areas to either boost or demote generals. like in jungle. you are vulnerable while your in these areas. regardless of rank. but i would prefer a one rank demotion/promotion.

lukulus: if you wnat to amase an attack you must either take the chance and reveal or go around. there is always the option of eliminating the move list for this game so that tracking is more difficult. so that the switch strategy from iyt is back in place again.

I dislike idea of grey spots. In combination with blocked way i t support defence style dratically. Why would I go into grey area?

Dark Prince: 

And a fine point it is.

That is how it is done in Dark Chess and it would be nice if it was done that way here as well.

Nothingness: You can always track down the piece you've seen once by looking at the move list on the right, so the pieces might as well stay visible. You could replace the vulcanoes by these grey spots. This way you can move the pieces already seen without further revealing and choose to reveal more to gain more movement freedom. I like the idea!

Actually I wasn't serious, but making the point that the move list can be detrimental to many possible good game ideas. Maybe the move list should indicate only the player's moves and not those of the opponent.

there is the option of having a specific spot being a "vision area" if you move into this GREY area you will be exposed then vanish once you leave that spot. the game would be played on a open board with GREY areas that are in designated locations (volcano like spots). then it depends on your memory or your tracking ability. So you are not limited in your movement but there is that danger that you have to reveal your pieces. but here is the catch... you have to play with one less spy than normal. Play this on a 10Vx11H board with 4 GREY areas. If the Spy comes into a GREY area he can have SUPER VISION but he is destroyed at the end of your opponents move and any piece that it sees is permanently visible. All other pieces that go into this area will not be destroyed but are just temporarily visble to your opponent. Your pieces will be as follows Two 5s, Two 4s, Three 3s, Four 2s, Six 1s, Four Sapp, and Four Spys. Four bombs, 1 flag. The game is played on a 10x11 board and the grey areas are in the middle on the 2-5-7-10 squares horizontally.

Dark prince has a very excellent idea with the erupting volcano. i like that!

Caused by a 1 that cannot move a space when causing it but counts as a piece move. The one must be touching the volcano diagonally to cause the eruption. The Eruption destroys any adjacent piece (hor or vert) and freezes pieces within 2 spaces for 2 turns(hor vert and diag) by covering them with ash--applies to both black and white pieces. Frozen pieces cannot be revealed by recons until they thaw, but capture rules are the same as usual. Previously revealed pieces covered in ash are disguised again until revealed by recon...oh wait, that won't make a difference with piece moves tracked in the move list.

lukulus: OK, got it. I would use “apply” or “use” instead of “plug in,” but it's just me being me there. :) However, the idea of volcano ash should be taken up! Maybe it can be used to shoot down the skydivers…

Pedro Martínez: it was one of my fault in English:) It would be plug in instead. Both players can eject aerial in same time.

happy hermit: may be it is because I am very passive player:) I see your point, but I think it could be very danger if radar is in midst of attack - with ejected aerial it cant move so it blocks own forces and using scan action costs time. May be there would be rule, that after 4 moves w/o action aerial automatically plug in and it cost one turn or so,but it llooks a bit complicated.

For attacking players there shold be parrachutist. It can move by two fields, also jump over vulcano (not ash at all:) and other stones. If landed on occupied field fight will start, if parrachutist win or if field is unoccupied, parrachutist also see all adjusted fields. Move restrictions - parrachutist can move by 2 fields every turn, but jump over occupied field once in two turns. Also after moving by two fields parrachutist is revealed.

lukulus: Do I understand it correctly that “rejecting an aerial” is a response of sorts to an aerial ejected by the opponent, preventing the effect of the opponent's aerial?

lukulus:

I like the radar piece (and I think you defined it well), but, unless I am missing something, it seems to lend itself to helping a passive player.  In other words, is there a better use of radar than putting it in the front  or second row and using the aerial on Move 1 and leaving it there? 

I think this game, as defined, is played optimally in a defensive posture and any modifications to the rules should be made to benefit the aggressor. 

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a radar piece added if other additions favorable to the attacker were made simultaneously.

Nothingness: it looks very powerfull, because is movable, but it inspires me to implement radar. It would have this actions actions: 1. move or just stand, in this case it cant see like other normal pieces. 2. eject aerial (cost one turn - in notation it is marked). With ejected aerial are two ather actions available - scan - to see, say,two pieces in all directions (cost one turn, noticed in notation) or plug-in aerial (cost one turn, noticed in notation). With ejected aerial radar cant move. Radar has not passive watching like spy has - it cant see enemy when dont scanning. Radar is very vulnerable and can be destroyed by all other pieces. "Moving" radar can destroy sappers, spies, radar and HQ.

how about a super spy that can see two spaces around it

happy hermit: you could also just give that road creating power to an existing piece. everytime a 2 moves he creates a road and when ever an enemy 2 moves into that road that road is destroyed. the 2 is the forgotten piece. but when you are on the road you are vulnerable to attack or perhaps you will be able to lose to a sab regardless of the rank. perhaps the road give you scout abilities from stratego.

An idea for a new piece, though it may only be interesting on a larger board.

Engineer - Automatically builds a 'road' when it moves.  Any piece on a 'road' may move to any other square lying on the road in one turn.

Not sure if each army should have their own roads and/or be able to destroy roads. Having recons (spies?scouts?, whatever they are called here) positioned on a road revealing enemy pieces that cross the road is also a possibility.

There seems to be both some potential for speeding things up as
well as introducing a new level of complexity with this.  I think larger boards / piece counts would also be possible.

Thoughts?

I have four games of Open Fast on the waiting list and am happy to get in some games in other variants as well.

happy hermit: wow that was hard work lol

Nothingness:

OK.  You talked me into it. :)

I agree it would be confusing and I don't seriously expect it to change, it is just a personal gripe with espionage and the reason why I only play small open with any regularity.

To all those entering the brain prize tourney. read the tourney explanation carefully. if you are only going to move once a day this may not be the tourney for you.

i also feel that there are certain rules that cannot be tweeked. That is one of the baseline rules. it would be like allowing a pawn in chess to move backwards. it would totally change chess theory as it is.

Justaminute: This was discussed many years ago. the majority of the players wanted a more aggresive version of espionage\sabotage. Allowing the move back and forth to the same spot could equate to many more draws. Also it creates a more defensive style ( which i prefer) but being realistic it makes the game bit dull. The game already prefers the aggressor by allowing ties to go to the attacker and not like the original game of stratego where both pieces are removed. This is also an issue with small espionage. the game is broken, more so on IYT, the random volcano fixed that problem to some point. Many other players can comment on this better than i could and with examples...hint hint....

My vote for a different version would be simply to allow a piece to move back to the square it came from. I think the attacker is always at a disadvantage in closed espionage, particularly the small version and this would eliminate this.

Sandoz: lol i dont think that the committee exists anymore either but probably shoudl be reinputted once we get the ball rolling again on this site.

Nothingness:
I am looking forward to your proposal.
Didn't know that the SL commitee still exists :-)

Just want to come back to our poll, which I haven't forgotten, of course. I think 8 weeks is a proper poll-period for guys who play games and tournaments which often last months or even years. ;-)

Well, according to our poll the most preferred variant is extinction espionage. 4 out of 6 participants voted for this.

For the results in detail please have a look here:
http://www.doodle.com/xcxzd4iidcrz6m2k

How are we progressing on the new game proposal? i am working a proposal myself which i will present to the SL commitee soon.

the move here was basically the move that lost me the game. i could nto see what was attacning and i was afriad of further penetration. i guess that the piece attacking the three was a sab and i was wrong. and it was all downhill from here.

Small Fast Espionage (Nothingness vs. Varazslo)

Here is a game vs Varsalo i recently completed. the purpose of the post is to show how important vision is and to show how leaving unproductive pieces deep in your opponents territory can be deadly especially while playing partially blind.

I have a fast open tourney starting in a few weeks 200 brains to the winner. good luck!

dmoresco is the winner of Open Fast #1. He wins the final match against Thom27.
Congratulation

how is everyone making out with the mentoring? Is the beginners tourney moving along at a nice speed?

Chaos: ah okay, thanks.
I saw that as well including his huge amount of vacation days shrinking to zero. and now he's close to timing out in at least 150 games including our little espionage battle :-(

Sandoz: I can see he hasn't been on the site for a month. This isn't new for Eric. He'll probably show up again within a few months.