Comments on Desfases

# 17 Comments. #

Reviews and Comments

Hi Antonio, if I understand this rule correctly...

> Rotate each of the tiles of their owned suit 90 degrees in a clockwise direction, unless they are currently occupied by a pawn.

it means that in a 4 player game, the player will rotate her 6 tiles each time unless a few of them are have pawn on them, is that right?

I felt like with your other game Glob I understand the rules but cannot imagine the game dynamics. I think your rules would benefit from a *Strategy* section in which you describe the situations that happen. I added one such section to Japan.

-- DanielAjoy

Hiya Daniel! Thanks for the feedback - this was actually the very first written feedback I've received for Glob (!), 8 1/2 years after being published...

The rule for turning the tiles is exactly as you have understood it: in every turn, the player in charge must turn a maximum of 6 tiles:

• In 4-player games this mechanic is totally transparent.
• In 2-player games, the players alternate suits (for example, player 1 turns suns, then player 2 turns arms, then player 1 turns moons, then player 2 turns crowns and back to the beginning).
• In 3-player games the fourth suit is moved (i.e. its tiles turned) each time by a player after moving their own suit (player 1, player 1 moves suit 4, player 2, player 3, player 1, player 2, player 2 moves suit 4, player 3, player 1, player 2, player 3, player 3 moves suit 4 and back to the beginning). I have realised that this is not clear from the rules, I will submit a corrected version to Ron as soon as I finish this comment.

In contrast to Glob (which does allow long-term strategies), Desfases is an eminently tactical game. I deliberately chose a random setup rather than initial positions chosen by the players in order to: (a) spare the problem of having too much to choose from and not knowing where to go; since the first score and the starting tile are already determined, players only need to care about securing a high score and then continue from there, (b) make the game slightly unfair - this should keep all players on their toes straight from the beginning.

There are some aspects to consider when choosing what tiles to score:

• Mobility is generally not an issue... until there are few tiles left to score.
• If a tile is currently facing another tile that can't be accessed by any player in the following turn, this tile can be scored very easily by a player with two turns left in their timer: it takes one turn to land on this tile and pin it (timer then on 1), and then another turn to move out onto the tile it's facing towards (timer on 0 -> score).
• The timing for the feeding zero coin into the timer should be chosen carefully: the pawn can score on two consecutive turns, but both times from the same position.
• The tiles on the corners of the board only have two facings in which they can be scored, and the other tiles along the outside and inside borders of the loop have three. Thus, it is more of a challenge to score these tiles, since they might actually be facing outside the board when the timers run out. This should be taken into account particularly towards the end of the game.
• For this reason, each player might not always be able to score their last one or two coins. This poses the question of when to use the coins with higher value: in the beginning it might seem more useful to secure as many tiles as possible before others do, but it might be worth waiting a couple of turns to use a higher-valued coin and then get a probably decisive boost in the scores.

-- Ottia 2018-08-10 (edit) 16:15 UTC

After more testing, I have made one last edit on the rules to save time during play: after one tile gets scored, it will remain pinned and not turned. This tile will be irrelevant for further scoring, thus so will its facing. However nice it is to see the whole board twirling, it does take quite a bit of time to turn all the tiles time and time again.

I have also changed the duration of the game in the wiki to count in some time to reflect in between moves.

-- Ottia 2018-07-26 07:36 UTC

I'm awfully sorry but there is still one more correction to make, after editing out the turns of scored tiles I forgot to delete the clause that affirmed that scored tiles "would still be turned". I have done that now - Ron will upload the new file (0.5... thousand apologies to him and you all for the inconvenience) soon.

-- Ottia 2018-08-10 16:08 UTC

Rules question from Facebook for version 0.1:

Define "free tiles".

Antonio: Free tiles: tiles that aren't currently occupied by a pawn. They don't necessarily have to be empty (they can have a coin on them).

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-08-17 20:48 UTC

I played this game with my girlfriend today. It was difficult at first to know what to do, we hadn't read this page before, but as the turns progressed we got the hang of it. We noticed all of the things you mention above. It was a bit hard to keep track of two suites, though. We think the game would be more enjoyable if played by exactly 4 players.

More questions:

Why is it important to keep rotating scored tiles?

Since those tiles are already scored, their orientation didn't matter to us. We ended up placing the coin exactly over the number to make it more obvious that they were out of commission already.

The value of Null tiles is 0 or 6? We played with Null = 0.

The rules say:

Move their pawn on the grid in a straight line over any amount of free tiles

Does that amount include 0 tiles? Because it was hard to plan moves in advanced, several "moves" were "no moves" in our game.

I personally liked how well the game was built, in that it matched the components so well. It's timing aspect reminded me of Sonic Bio-Mutants in Space.

-- DanielAjoy

Daniel, you ask, "Why is it important to keep rotating scored tiles?"

It's not. There are later versions of the rules that you haven't seen that make it clear you don't need to rotate scored tiles.

Also, I'm pretty sure null=0. The rules don't make sense any other way.

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-10-15 03:08 UTC

Ron is right - null = 0.

-- Ottia 2018-10-16 16:17 UTC

Players have to move at least one space - the only "zero move" is when the timer is fed the zero tile. It does make things a little bit more difficult (hehehehe).

-- Ottia 2018-10-17 05:35 UTC

That was my thought. It doesn't make any sense from a strategic game design standpoint to allow players to squat indefinitely in front of tiles they want to score. All our games were played assuming you have to move unless you're scoring.

That said, Daniel is correct that the phrasing "any amount" is ambiguous. Also, I think you mean "any number of tiles", not "any amount of tiles".

-- RonHaleEvans 2018-10-17 16:35 UTC

Thanks for the corrections! I have incorporated them into the 0.6 (!) version of the rules; I have also scrapped the 3-player game. Last but not least, there are thanks to you both and to Dan Burkey for the feedback I have received until now. I think this should finally be the definitive version of the rules - thanks for bearing with me.

-- Ottia 2018-10-23 12:36 UTC

Some rules questions I have:

1. Assuming the top die face isn't null the distance the pawn moves doesn't depend at all on the top die face's rank?
2. You can't jump over the center space but you can jump over other pawns on the orthogonal/diagonal line one wishes to travel along as long as one doesn't "land" on another pawn? If you cannot jump over other pawns what happens if there is a pawn in a corner tile and all three adjacent tiles also have pawns in them (i.e. that pawn in the corner "must" move but it would also have nowhere legal to move)?
3. You can score a tile with a pawn on top as long it doesn't have a coin on top?

Thanks!

-- TrevorLDavis 2020-08-19 06:42 UTC

Thanks for the questions, Trevor! The answers are as follows: 1. Exactly. The top die face's rank simply states the amount of turns left to score. 2. In that case the timer continues but the pawn stays indeed put. I will edit the rules to clarify this. 3. Exactly.

-- Ottia 2020-09-04 15:29 UTC

Thanks a lot for doing the animation as well. It looks smashing - I really appreciate the effort.

-- Ottia 2020-09-04 15:32 UTC

Thanks for the answers! Glad you enjoyed the animation, sorry I made a mistake in it and didn't have the time to animate a full game.

-- TrevorLDavis 2020-09-04 19:11 UTC

I have sent the corrected rules to Ron. I have also added you to the Acknowledgements "section" - many thanks again.

-- Ottia 2020-09-05 00:41 UTC

Ottia, I received the rules in email and will post them ASAP. I'm glad to see Desfases is getting the Trevor treatment! 😉

-- RonHaleEvans 2020-09-05 18:44 UTC

Thanks a lot, Ron! The animation looks fantastic (it is also too fast for me to notice the mistake, anyway I wouldn't have given a hoot if I had noticed it... I'm extremely grateful that he put the time to do it). I'm really happy that he made those three questions as well, I wonder how come I bypassed the issue about cornered pieces when I was checking all the previous drafts.

I hope I can still get something ready soon for the design contest. What I have so far doesn't quite gel yet, unfortunately.

-- Ottia 2020-09-05 22:40 UTC

I've uploaded the new rules and reorganized the page somewhat, including moving the animation to the top and avoiding the wall of text effect.

I hope you have a game for the Iron Piecepack Designer contest, Ottia. I am planning to post a couple of pages soon, including tips on playtesting during the pandemic, and a page listing all known rulesets ready for playtest, as we had during the last competition. I think if we had the latter a few months ago, we'd already see more entries.

-- RonHaleEvans 2020-09-06 17:53 UTC