Ithaka, Boll's Game, Powerlines

["Iain Cheyne" <news@...>]

I tried some little abstracts with my wife last weekend. Two were
from my list of generic abstracts that should work with the
Piecepack ? Ithaka and Boll's Game. Neither were much fun to
play. Ithaka is like glorified tic-tac-toe and we only won or lost
games when our opponent got bored and made bad moves. Boll's Game
was more interesting, but very one-dimensional. All you try to do is
to take your opponents' pieces and retreat out of range as far as
possible. We played on a 6x6 board, but apparently, it's best on
a 4x4, so I might give it another chance. I'm going to persevere with
these Generic Abstracts, but I am not encouraged by these first two.

The last was Powerlines, which was good. It's elegant and
skilful. It's probably my favourite piecepack game after Evade
and Froggy Bottom - although you could easily play it with a pack of
cards.

http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/ithaka.htm
http://www.di.fc.ul.pt/~jpn/gv/bollsgame.htm
http://www.piecepack.org/rules/PowerLines.pdf

--
Iain