Subject: MN-L: Re: Game 11...

From: "Jonathan Ellis" <jonathan@f...>
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:58:41 +0100

>It has a very traditional feel to it, certainly, but I don't think it's
too compatible with the way that the game's working at the moment; Token
Stacking is a fairly random affair, and quite hard (or at least
uninteresting) to plan in advance ("Aha, if I do these pointless Actions
this Turn, and these superfluous ones next Turn, I can complete a
Stack"). And dropping Tokens along your route needs you to travel back
and forth through the same Stations a few times for it to be of any use,
which is less than exciting.
Yes, but there are not many actions which have no real effects on
the game (and are therefore pointless.) A Fire at a Station one move is
one direction that you can't travel in next move, a Peg at Dollis Hill
(as I played) reduces the effects of Dollis Hill as a strategy (and
believe me, it could be a good strategy - lure people there and Clamp
them, typical of the more acceptable ideas introduced by Ruttsborough in
his playing style): forcing a Mind the Gap (for stacks involving a
Silver) inconveniences everybody - so does putting the game into Knip or
forcing a certain direction on the Circle Line - and (in the event of
landing at the same station as another Player) the choice of Clamp to
use might be influenced by which Tokens one wishes to play. Have you
ever wondered why people sometimes deliberately put the game into knip
in real MC, when everybody suffers as a result? Presumably because they
think they can get some advantage out of an otherwise pointless
action...
One idea that I would like to see (it isn't in next week's
Proposals, but will be in the week after next) is that of forcing all
Tokens expended on a particular Action to be placed on the same Stack.
At the moment they can be arranged at will, which leaves the system much
more open to abuse. (And if you want to play an Action which you can't
play the tokens for at all, you have to go around picking up the
superfluous tokens until a space is possible for the tokens to be
played...)

>> Manoeuvres will always remain possible, [...]
>> But for my part I haven't done anything I wanted (yet) to put a
>> name to...
>
>Me neither, and I do wonder if it's worth reinventing the concept of
Manoeuvres, solving the flaw of their murkiness - perhaps a compulsory
"I'm about to complete a Manoeuvre next Turn" Action, along the lines of
Dunx's old "Atari" suggestion, would solve some of its troubles.

That might be possible, but personally I prefer the idea that one
has to spot the opponents *without* them telling you what they are
doing. After all, in chess, you don't announce your intentions to your
opponents (and, while I'm a great Rutts fan on some occasions, my
original favourite MC grandmaster was the Russian chess fiend
Baryshnikov.) For instance, any one of you guys at Charing Cross could
have come up the Jubilee, blocked Neasden and denied my Rushton Memorial
Gambit. But because most of you were so preoccupied in picking up
Pigeons, nobody noticed - indeed Dunx was kind enough to kill the
potential DH Loop (if everybody had followed, I couldn't have escaped as
I had neither Silver Tokens nor an LV of 10). One just has to be on
one's guard. Likewise, a Power Failure on the Northern might have killed
RiffRaff's Morden Paradox, but nobody was too worried. MC is surely a
game of strategy, after all...

Jonathan.

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