6

Many games - such as Othello, Checkers, Chess1, and Go - are played on highly-regular, square boards.

How would the game mechanic change if you played an Othello-like game on, say, a Chinese Checkers board?

All other rules being equal - ie you can only flip in direct vectors from the piece played - would this be likely to be a viable game-play mechanic?


1 excluding variants such as Chess4

3
  • on a chinese checker board the starting positions would be wierd. There is usually 1 center point on the board where in othello the board length and width are even, causing the center to be shared amongst the 4 starting positions.
    – Colin D
    Jun 14, 2013 at 15:18
  • @ColinD - I agree that particular example would be 'weird' .. it was just the first non-regular board I could think of :)
    – warren
    Jun 14, 2013 at 15:19
  • 1
    I had a feeling someone already thought of this.
    – ghoppe
    Jun 17, 2013 at 17:03

2 Answers 2

4

As long as the grid is even, Othello should play just fine, provided you change the staring cluster.

 . . . . 
. . B W .
 . B W B .
. . W B . 

should do, with white moving first...

1

There is a fairly famous othello variation called octagon othello. it's basically played on a 10x10 board with the corner regions cut out.

   ....
  ......
 ........
..........
....ox....
....xo....
..........
 ........
  ......
   ....

You suddenly not only have 4 corners but 8. The basic game play is still fine (even with the standard start position). But yeah pretty much any rule change is noticeable to othello. a 6x6 vs. the standard 8x8 is filled with much more stoner traps, you play more x squares that are less dangerous and the edges are even more important, you also have less of mobility control (not enough moves to actually get there and not many moves to make use of it). 10x10 vs. 8x8, the 10x10 is still a lot about mobility control, but edges became more complicated but also less important. you have more frequently both players sharing an edge (wedges).

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