Mira
(six years old) says she likes this game!
Mira
(six years old) says she likes this game!
What's
the big idea?
M&E was inspired by a
Chinese board game I read about and played many years ago. Recently (in
1996), Peter Donelly created an excellent PC-adaptation of this game (published
as shareware by Skoocom Software), which he calls "The Animal Game" (according
to him, this is what its Chinese name, Shou Qi, means). This screenshot
of the starting line-up
shows
that the game includes (in order of strength, as indicated by the numbers)
elephant, lion, tiger, leopard, wolf, dog, cat and rat. For a rundown of
the rules, as given by Peter Donelly, click here.
If you try out "The Animal
Game" (and I'd encourage you to do so, as a suitable warm-up for M&E!)
you'll probably agree that it's a nice little game with some interesting
ideas, but lacking any real depth. Its major flaw is the inexorable tendency
to produce frustrating draws (by repetition of moves) between experienced
players. So perhaps "The Animal Game" is best thought of as an ideal introduction
to strategic boardgaming for children, or indeed to the hierarchical
basics of M&E.
I've always felt that the pieces
in "The Animal Game" have not enough room to manoeuvre, so the first thing
I changed was to remove the water and enlarge the playing area.
Furthermore I considered the
winning condition somewhat limiting and static. Outnumbered pieces could
often still huddle around their den and hold a boring draw against a teeth-gnashing
opponent.
So I introduced a mobile target
(the human), which - due to the second winning condition (see below) -
could also take the initiative.
I also found that moving just
one animal one square at a time was more a game of slugs than of highly-strung
mammals. So I gave players the right to move three pieces a distance of
three per turn.
And that's more or less the
way we played it for a number of years, way back in the 1970s. The game,
now one of pure and sophisticated skill, worked pretty well that way, yet
somehow failed to inspire long-term enthusiasm, probably because the same
player(s) tended to win always... A bit like chess then, only that M&E
looked more light-hearted and "fun" than it actually was!
In the late 1980s I had another
look at the game and began to experiment with the introduction of dice.
Alas, I didn't find the right mixture of skill and luck (the latter now
tended to dominate to an unacceptable degree), and the game was shelved
yet again.
You will have guessed it by
now: At long last I believe I have found the magic formula to bring this
game to life! So let's have a look at the rules as they currently stand:
In M&E, the animals' hierarchy
of strength (from strongest to weakest) is as follows:
Elephant, polar bear, tiger
(bigger than the lion in real life, so it got promoted!), lion, wolf, westie
("West Highland White Terrier", to be exact), cat and mouse.
The human (let's call her
queen from now on, after all at the end of the day she'll decide the game
one way or another) is the weakest and loses against any animal.
But that's not quite all:
Every child knows that elephants shriek in panic whenever they see a mouse.
This well established zoological fact is reflected in the game: While the
mouse loses against all other animals, it is the only one capable of beating
the elephant.
A somewhat less documented
"special relationship" exists between polar bears and westies. As a matter
of fact, the former regard the latter as superior beings which they would
surely worship if only they had a religion. In the game, then, this translates
into the westie winning not only against his "natural" inferiors, the cat
and the mouse, but also against the polar bear.
What
you need:
- A board of 19 x 13 squares
- For each player a set of
9 pieces (8 animals + 1 human) in different colours
- Two pairs of 6-sided dice
The
two ways to win the game:
Eliminate your opponent's
queen OR reach the other side of the board (your opponent's 1st rank) with
your own queen!
Starting
line-up:
Both players put their queen
on the central square of their bottom rank, and four animals to her left
and right (in whichever order they choose).
Some sort of screen (e.g.
a newspaper) may be used to mutually conceal piece placement.
Here's an example:
Dice
rolls and what they mean:
The sum of your two 6-sided
dice determines how many pieces you are allowed to move this turn and what
the maximum length of each piece's move is. If you are at all familiar
with dice games you will know, of course, that 7 is the most likely sum
with 6/36, while 2 and 12 at 1/36 are pretty unlikely but have a nasty
habit of turning up when least convenient. For easy reference, I have included
each move's probability in the table below:
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Thus if you roll, say, 6 + 3 = 9, you can move two of your pieces a maximum of four squares each.
Moving
the pieces:
- Only vertical and horizontal
- not diagonal! - moves are allowed.
- One or more changes of direction
(at a 90º angle) within the move of a piece are allowed.
- A piece may step on a particular
square more than once within its move.
- Pieces cannot move across
squares which are occupied by other pieces (be they friendly or hostile).
- A player may move less pieces
or move individual pieces less squares than his dice allow if he so desires.
Taking
pieces:
- If a piece steps on a square
occupied by a weaker enemy piece, this piece is taken (i.e. eliminated
from the game) and the victorious piece takes its place. If this piece
has movement points left it may continue moving.
- A piece can only take one
enemy piece each move.
- If a player takes the opponent's
queen with any animal, he wins and the game ends immediately.
- If two identical animals
coincide on a square, they cancel each other out and both have to leave
the game. In the case of two queens doing this the game ends in a draw.
The
Four Player Game
More than a mere afterthought
to what is basically a game for two players, the four player version offers
enormous scope for complex strategy and tactics.
It is a partnership game (two
vs two), and it works best if all four players are reasonably proficient
in the two player game (i.e. beyond the phase of simple beginners' mistakes,
which could all too easily spoil an interesting position).
In order for a team to win,
they have to either take one of their opponents' queens OR reach the other
side of the board (their opponents' 1st rank) with one of their own queens.
The starting line-up leaves
the central square of each baseline free and each player places his pieces
in the usual manner (i.e. with the queen in the middle) on the 9 squares
of one side:
Play proceeds clockwise, beginning with the second player of one team. In the above example, if Beige rolls and plays first, after him both opponents (Blue and Green) play in succession, and Red is last.
And that's just about it, as far as the rules are concerned. I may add a section on variations later on. Now go and have a look at:
Some
basic strategy
Do it yourself!
Any questions or comments?
Mail
me!