paper and pencil Amazons

[EWOH27]

Inspired by Walter Joris's very interesting, if not consistently well-written
book on paper and pencil games, I tried a paper and pencil version of Amazons
today, solitaire style. It's the same as regular Amazons, except that the
square from which your Amazon moved automatically becomes an arrow square after
the Amazon moves away from it, but before it shoots its new arrow. This means
that you can play it with X's and O's for the Amazons, and color in the arrow
squares, or use a superimposed X and O together for all arrow squares. The
game is faster, since each move uses up two empty squares instead of one, and
tactics are different, since it becomes much harder to get back into a region
once you move out of it. There's even a little more subtlety to figuring out
how many endgame moves a given territory will produce. I'd like to encourage
others to try it and post their thoughts here. I have some other ideas for
Amazons variants playable on paper and pencil, and I'll put the good ones up
here as I figure out what they are.

[Sterten]

can't you include this into one of the amazons
computer programs ?
Should be easy to adapt. At least for the board+rules,
playing strength , could suffer a bit.

I haven't tried it with pencil and paper, but would
be interested, how you judge about it.
Is it more interesting/difficult than normal amazons ?

Is it more or less Go - like than normal amazons ?
Is it harder for the programmer to make a program
which beats the best humans or easier ?

[EWOH27]

>can't you include this into one of the amazons
> computer programs ?

I'm not a programmer

>how you judge about it.
>Is it more interesting/difficult than normal amazons ?

Different, at least. Since it's harder for an amazon to get back into a region
once it leaves, I suspect cooperation between the Amazons becomes more
important, but I'm not sure. Since the board fills with blocks faster, the
game might be less interesting for those who want a longer game with more
decisions to make. I hadn't intended to improve on Amazons, just to make an
Amazons variant you could play anywhere, without a board or pieces.

>Is it more or less Go - like than normal amazons ?

It's hard to answer this. Maybe the reduction in freedom of movement and the
reduction in the number of turns makes it less Go-like.

>Is it harder for the programmer to make a program
>which beats the best humans or easier ?

I have no idea, not being a programmer.

[Sterten]

there are some other possibilities to vary Amazon-parameters:

- the number of Amazons
- the board size
- the number of arrows
- the way how Amazons and/or arrows move
- the color of Amazons (some Amazons could be used by both players)
- ...

For your idea, to throw an additional arrow at the departure square
of the Amazon, I think it's an interesting variation to
use this as the only arrow : just mark the visited squares,
no arrows. This is also playable with paper and pencil.

Who wins on boards of size 1*1,2*2,3*3,4*4,...
when each player has just one Amazon ?

--Guenter.