Coin Collectors

Description

A solitaire game for the piecepack, and my entry in the SolitaryConfinement contest. Send the four pawns around the board to collect all 24 coins. The dice tell you where you can move.

Image of a game in progress courtesy of Kazunori Iriya

Rules

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VaCn8TDLiQz2Klq27fZaP6PVkz0wD_UYscqiUCdZRdQ/pub or https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VaCn8TDLiQz2Klq27fZaP6PVkz0wD_UYscqiUCdZRdQ/export?format=pdf

CoinCollectorsTextVersion

Reviews & Comments

To start with, Coin Collectors boasts a supremely elegant design. Its setup can be explained in seconds (5x5 tiles with a gap in the center, all pawns in the gap and a coin on each tile, value-side up) and so can its rules (throw the desired dice up to three times, move one pawn onto a tile with a coin if the die matches the tile or if the die matches the suit of the pawn and the value of the coin, take the coin). The goal can be explained even more concisely: take as many coins as possible.

The best thing about Coin Collectors, though, is that behind this simplest of backbones lurks a fiendishly difficult tactical game that demands more planning than could be expected in a game with a fully random setup and up to twelve dice throws per turn. The ability to keep dice from one turn to the next means that "safety net dice" can be set apart, which is nearly always mandatory to get all four pawns out of the gap. After only a handful of turns it must be decided how the pawns are going to sweep across the board to get all the coins (it is easier than it looks to leave stranded coins on the board) and then it is recommendable to keep at least one "safety" die after each turn. This obviously gets increasingly difficult as the available spaces on the board become less. Clearing the table does require some luck but if the player has made it to that stage in the game, it has definitely deserved it.

Quick, sneaky and very replayable, Coin Collectors is in my opinion one of the very best solitaire games devised for the Piecepack.

-- Antonio Recuenco Muñoz

CategoryGame SolitaireThemedGamesCategory