Chris & Cathy Miller

It’s no secret that we here at the Lair love us some board games. And while we strive to acquaint ourselves with the latest developments¹ and novelest of designs in the board gaming world (entirely for your benefit, of course!), we would be remiss in our overlorldly duties if we failed to inform you also of the true classics of the genre, games that have held up under decades–even centuries–of play. In that vein, I’d like to bring to your attention one of the world’s oldest continually-played board games: the game we call Go.

Go–also known as weiqi (圍棋) in China, baduk (바둑) in Korea, and more fully as igo (囲碁) in Japan–is a game that originated approximately 2,000 years ago. Though the game originated in China, the rules were later refined slightly by the Japanese and it is in this form that the game is played today.² The game is popular throughout Asia, and its popularity has grown throughout the rest of the world in recent decades. As a pure strategy game,³ it naturally invites comparisons to Chess–though as we’ll see, it’s a very different game indeed.

A full game is played on a grid of 19 x 19 lines, though smaller boards (9 x 9 and 13 x 13 are the most common) are often used for practice, training, or for a shorter game.⁴ Players alternate playing black and white stones on the intersections of the grid lines, with each player placing one stone per turn. The goal is to use your stones to surround more open space on the board than your opponent.

You can also capture your opponent’s stones (and remove them from the board) by surrounding them completely, so that they are not adjacent to any open intersection.

The stones you capture are subtracted from your opponent’s score at the end of the game. The game proceeds until both players agree that there are no more advantageous moves that can be made. Generally, this is indicated by both players “passing” on their move.

And… that’s pretty much it. With a few exceptions for specific situations, those are all the rules of the game. And yet, from this extremely simple set of rules comes an incredible strategic depth and unmatched complexity. For example, when you can only make one type of move, elegance and efficiency become extremely important. How do you make a move that is both offensive and defensive at the same time, or that your opponent must respond to? Stones on one side of the board can have influence on groups forming half a board away. Certain shapes and patterns become better for making territory and keeping your stones from capture.

Indeed, this focus on shapes and patterns is one of the reasons Go is often referred to as an intuitive game, as opposed to a logical one like Chess. Players learn to recognize common situations and patterns of play–sometimes without even being aware of it. Go is also a great way to improve your concentration and memory skills:⁵ visualizing a chain of moves and responses–”reading ahead”–is a vital part of learning to play. At first, you may only be able to think ahead two, three, or four moves. But even without trying, you’ll soon find yourself able to hold in memory and predict a sequence of 10, 15, 20 or more moves. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find players who can replay entire games from memory. This may seem intimidating at first, but the beauty of the game is that these skills and strategies arise organically through play and intuition, rather than study and analysis.⁶

I stumbled onto Go at a time when I was becoming less and less satisfied with Chess. Though I still love that game as well, I find Go much more appealing and satisfying in terms of strategy and complexity.⁷ In Chess, you start with a full board and relatively few options; in Go, it’s the opposite, and I find that appeals much more to my innate strategic sense.

There’s so much more I could talk about in regards to this game. If you’re coming to Balticon this weekend, I’ll be bringing my set; feel free to ask me to play and/or talk your ear off about it! I’m fairly rusty, so you’ll probably even win. If you want to learn more, the Kiseido Go Server has an excellent tutorial, and you can also play online there for free. I play there from time to time,⁸ and I’d love to see you there as well!

1. The technical term is “the new shiny.”
2. People do still play with the Chinese rules, however. The only major difference is in how the game is scored at the end, though this does contribute to the strategy of play.
3. That is, a game with no random elements or hidden information.
4. As an aside, you often hear new players encouraged to play on a 9 x 9 board. While I think this is a great way to get a handle on basic, small-scale tactics, it teaches nothing of the larger strategy of the game. Also, on a board that small, there’s simply no room to recover from a mistake–possibly the most valuable skill in the game! I encourage people to move to a 13 x 13 board as soon as possible, as I think it provides an excellent balance between strategic depth and a quick game.
5. Something I always need he–ooh, something shiny! … What was I talking about?
6. Certainly, though, there is plenty of study and analysis in the Go world! Volumes and volumes have been written on strategy and patterns to memorize. Still, I find the best way to learn–at least for me–is by playing, studying actual games, or by doing practice problems; that is, simply doing it and seeing what happens.
7. I once heard someone describe Go as like simultaneously playing four interlocking games of Chess. Yes, I think this is a good thing!
8. My username is, unsurprisingly, jramboz.

The friendly staff of The Secret Lair will be recruiting minions during two important sessions at Balticon:

Sunday, 6:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Derby)
NM-73. Secret Lair Design For Minions 101 (New Media)
In this highly informative educational session, the staff of the
Secret Lair will work with the audience to design and implement traps and countermeasures to keep those meddling
heroes out of The Secret Lair. Special Guest Star Jared Axelrod
will play the part of The Hero, describing how he would attempt
to break into The Lair. The audience (minions) will have to assist
the Lair staff in designing traps to foil the hero.
(M): Chris Miller, (S): John Cmar, Jared Axelrod

Sunday, 8:00 pm (50 Minutes) (Chesapeake)
NM-74. The Secret Lair Live! (New Media)
Join Overlord Chris Miller and Doctor John Cmar for a live
recording of The Secret Lair. Surprise guests! Games! ShetlandBonobo Pony rides! Fun for all ages!
(M): Chris Miller, John Cmar

As an added bonus, we will be giving away free copies of our new  game, Evil Overlord Dice, in which you and your friends will do battle to destroy one another’s lairs. If you see us, ask for a copy!  Drinking rules included at no additional cost!

Hope to see you there!

1. Treiman’s Theorem: Impossible things don’t usually happen.
2. O’Reilly’s law of the kitchen: Cleanliness is next to impossible.
3. Lieberman’s law: Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter since nobody listens.
4. Denniston’s law: Virtue is its own punishment.
5. Gold’s law: If the shoe fits, its ugly.
6. Conway’s law: In any organization, there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person should be fired.
7. Finster’s law: A closed mouth gathers no feet.
8. Lynch’s law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
9. Muir’s law: When we try to separate anything out by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
10. Glyme’s formula for success: The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
11. Mason’s first law of synergism: The one day you’d sell your birthright for something, birthrights are a glut.
12. Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
13. Handy guide to modern science: If it’s green or wriggles, it’s biology. If it stinks, it’s chemistry. If it doesn’t work, it’s physics.
14. Green’s law of debate: Anything is possible if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
15. Stewart’s law of retroaction: It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
16. First rule of history: History doesn’t repeat itself, historians merely repeat each other.
17. Oliver’s law of location: No matter where you go, there you are.
18. Harrison’s postulate: For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
19. Lerman’s Law of Technology: Any technical problem can be overcome given enough time and money.
    Corollary: You are never given enough time or money.
20. Murphy’s First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five.
21. Law of the Search: The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it.
    Corollary: It will not be in the last place you expect to find it.
22. Kauffman’s Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed.
23. The Salary Axiom: The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no positive effect on your take-home pay.
24. Miller’s Law of Insurance: Insurance covers everything except what happens.
25. First Law of Living: As soon as you start doing what you always wanted to be doing, you’ll want to be doing something else.
26. Weiner’s Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross-references.
27. Isaac’s Strange Rule of Staleness: Any food that starts out hard will soften when stale. Any food that starts out soft will harden when stale.
28. Kenny’s Law of Auto Repair: The part requiring the most consistent repair or replacement will be housed in the most inaccessible location.
29. Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person’s name, you will pick the wrong one.
    Corollary – If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong anyway.
30. The Grocery Bag Law: The candy bar you planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.
31. Yeager’s Law: Washing machines break down only during the wash cycle.
    Corollary: All breakdowns occur on the plumber’s day off.
32. Lampner’s Law of Employment: When leaving work late, you will go unnoticed. When you leave work early, you will meet the boss in the parking lot.
33. Quile’s Consultation Law: The job that pays the most will be offered when there is no time to deliver the services.
34. Loftus’ Law: Some people manage by the book, even though they don’t know who wrote the book or even which book it is.
35. Lovka’s Dilemma: You never get away, you only get someplace else.
36. Hellrung’s Law: If you wait, it will go away.
    Shevelson’s Extension: … having done its damage.
    Grelb’s Addition: … if it was bad, it will be back
37. Coles’S Law: Thinly sliced cabbage

(liberated from http://wilk4.com/. ‘Cause we just had to share.)

In the last episode, Jimmy Keenan, importer and smuggler, was paid a visit by a mysterious new lawyer. The man informed Keenan that he would be handling his defense and that they had a lot to talk about. And now, the latest chapter of Doc Azrael, Angel of Death.

Officer Ronald Corley awoke to the sound of someone rapping on his car window. “Ronnie? Ronnie, are you awake?” He could just barely hear his wife’s voice through the glass.

Groggily, he looked around. His car was sitting outside of his house. Corley nodded slowly to his wife, Doris, and opened the door of his vehicle.  “Ronnie, what happened? You were late and then I heard  your horn and found you… here.”

Ronald rose unsteadily. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was investigating… I had to work late.” He looked up and down the dark street. “Can we talk about this inside?”

The young woman nodded and helped him into the house.

As his wife made him a pot of coffee, she asked, “Was this about the vigilante again?”

“Yes.” He sighed heavily and related the story. “After the taxi dropped off Sergeant Parr, I followed the cab out of the district. I had hoped it would lead me to Doc Azrael. It turns out I was right.”

Doris let out an unintended gasp.

“I followed the cab into an alley, but it disappeared. When I turned to back out, there was a figure, all dressed in black, blocking my path. He approached the car, and the engine died. Without thinking, I turned the key again and again. All I wanted to do was get out of there.”

“When he reached the driver’s side door, he spoke. The window was rolled up, but I could hear his voice as if he were in the passenger seat, next to me.”

“’Are you so eager to have your name added to my book, Officer Ronald Corley?’”

“His voice seemed to echo, only it wasn’t really an echo, it was like a dozen voices all speaking at once, all saying the same thing, only a little out of sync. All I could do was shake my head.”

“’Then why do you seek me so persistently?’”

“It’s hard to remember the details. I couldn’t make out his face, it was like the glass had gone all funny – like in a mirror house at the carnival. And there was this smell, I remember trying to figure out where it was coming from.”

“’Meddle not in the affairs of angels, Officer Corley, lest angels meddle with you.”

Ronald shook his head. “Everything went dark then. The next thing I remember I was here.” He sat up with a start. “He must have driven my car home. Maybe he left a clue!” The young police officer tried to stand.

Doris grabbed his arm. “Please don’t, Ronnie. I don’t know who or what this vigilante is, but he gave you a chance to stay out of this. Please take it.”

Corley looked into her face. “But it’s my job.” He sighed. “I guess you’re right. I don’t have any evidence that he’s actually hurting people.”

“And he seems to be helping you clean up the neighborhood. Just let it be.”

Ronald nodded. “I’m going to go try a get some sleep. You coming?”

“In just a minute. Let me clean this up.”

Corley shrugged and left the kitchen. His wife watched him leave. Doris then pulled the business card she had removed from his windshield out of her pocket. On it was a single eye superimposed on a pair of black wings – the calling card of Doc Azrael.

First appeared in audio form on Flash Cast 56 ( http://flashpulp.com ).

One of the games I discovered this year at PAX is Robo Rally, which I’ve heard about for many years but have never played. In Robo Rally, up to eight players control different robots which drive around an arena full of conveyor belts, spinners, lasers, pushers, and deadly pits. The robots shove each other, fire lasers at each other, and each tries to run a course along the proscribed route to win the game. In some ways, it feels like playing Steve Jackson’s Car Wars, only far less complex.

But the real genius is in the gameplay: you’ve got to “program” your robot turn-by-turn. Each turn, players receive a hand of cards. Each if these cards contains an instruction such as “Move Forward 2″, “Turn Left”, “Back Up”, or “U Turn”. You look carefully at your path, accounting for any conveyor belts or spinners that may change your path, and play the five cards face-down. This process requires more thinking than you might suspect. And to make it worse, the process is rushed: once all but one of the players have finished programming, the final player is given a countdown timer, and if he/she doesn’t finish on time, the player to his/her left selects the remaining moves. This leads to frequent mistakes. Failing to account for a spinner can turn your entire course 90 degrees midway through, and end up with you in a pit. Placing a move 2 instead of a move 1 can put you on a conveyor belt you hadn’t planned for. And even if you plan your route perfectly, you may be pushed by another robot who hadn’t even expected you to be there, and that can change your course entirely.

Once each player has placed five cards, everyone plays their first card, then fires a laser. Then everyone plays their second card, then fires a laser. On this goes until all five cards are played. Then everyone reprograms.

As robots become damaged by each other and the environment, they begin to receive fewer cards each turn, and thus fewer options. At first, this just means that a robot’s five moves must be selected from a smaller pool. But once the cards dip below five, the robot will actually move more slowly, and if you end up on a conveyor belt with nothing but left and right turns, you’ve got no way to control where you’re going. Many conveyor belts lead right off the edge of the map, and once you fall off, you lose one of your three lives and must go back to your last waypoint. You can shut down your robot to heal damage, but this means you’re not moving for an entire turn. And it’s possible for other robots to shove you into a pit or laser or onto a conveyor belt during that time.

Waypoints are like save points – you return there when you die. Each time you reach a flag, you can pass through the flag to satisfy that part of the victory condition, or stop on the flag to set a new waypoint. Ending your turn on a specific square with only the cards you’re given can be a challenge. Doing it under time pressure is even tougher.

There are lots of other nuances of the game that I haven’t yet encountered, since I’ve only ever played the game once, but I found it to be a lot of fun. When I first read the rules, the game seemed crazy and complicated, but once we started playing I found that things moved very quickly.

Photos courtesy of Michael Delaney

Robo Rally
Players: 2-8
Recommended Age: 10 and up
Time to play: 120 minutes
Price: $35 – $40