Comments on StraToGo

# 3 Comments. # Stratego is an active trademark of Jumbo Games. I'm not a lawyer but StraToGo seems to phonetically be a very similar name to Stratego... Stratego is basically an implementation of the 1908 game L'Attaque (whose American trademark seemingly was allowed to expire in the 90s) suggesting Piece Attack, P'Attaque, Piecepack Attack, etc. as possible alternative names that directly indicate what the game is about without such a high "Likelihood of confusion" with an active trademark...

-- TrevorLDavis 2023-05-15 03:52 UTC

I played a couple games with my 6 and a half year old with some simplifications to make it more tractable for my young opponent:

• My son thought it was really fun and wanted to keep playing! It was late however and I made him go to bed...
• Army ranks were simplified to just the numbers: 5 (captain) > 4 (lieutenant) > 3 (sergeant) > 2 (miner). The special ace became the flag (and nulls remained bombs).
• Instead of each player having five coins per suit I reduced it to four coins per suit and replaced one coin of each suit with that suit's die with its rank facing up. Each of the four remaining coins per suit were rotated in one of the four directions (Up, Left, Right, Down) and the matching tile (i.e. four of suns) was rotated in the same direction as its matching coin and then placed on a domino rack so that only its owner could see it. In this way you could know what all your own pieces are without needing to flip any of them over to check but you would only know the opponents 2 scouts, 2 die pieces, and whichever of the opponent pieces you have inferred and remembered.
• In these two games I had the two dice per player be bombs but this was actually a poor choice. Once you know where the opponent's captain is and their bombs then (since no Spy) there is nothing to stop the captain coming up the other side of the board... Unsure whether it would be better to let players choose which ranks are used on dice or pre-assign them.
• In the rules you have "Each player takes the coins and pawn from two suits. One player taking red and yellow, the other blue and black.". Perhaps it would be best to simplify that to "Each player takes the coins and pawn from two suits." with perhaps a footnote of your preferred way to do that. According to the AnatomyOfAPiecepack crowns can also be green instead of yellow and some players are color blind. Red/yellow versus blue/black is a popular scheme and with the JcdPiecepack would give you "light" versus "dark" designed suits but some players and designs prefer "astronomical" versus the "power" suits.

-- TrevorLDavis 2023-06-26 21:56 UTC

• My son has wanted to play what he calls "Capture the Flag" four nights in a row so I've added the GamesForChildrenCategory tag to the game.
• My son doesn't really care about the "place tiles on domino racks" scheme I had come up with to tell what your pieces are without needing to flip any pieces over and he is fine flipping over his own pieces frequently.
• However, my son does like having two rank-customizable dice and 10 coins instead of 12 coins so it is easier to implement handicapping schemes like giving him extra "5" pieces if his Dad (who may have played a bunch of Stratego as a teenager) is winning too often.

-- TrevorLDavis 2023-06-30 19:30 UTC