EVL

A brain bending battle of good vs. EVL

When I designed NXS, so many years ago, I always figured that would be my one and only game. And until recently, other than designing some variants of NXS, I really had no desire to create a new game. After all, getting myself to actually make anything happen with NXS took over 20 years!

But, largely spurred by my desire to create a Hnefatafl variant that could be played entirely with a NXS set, I’ve started to see more games in my future. Designing heXentafl made me stretch my brain. I’ve also had this idea floating around in the back of my brain for years, that if I ever did decide to design another game, that it would use heptagons (7 sided polygons). Why? Because everyone, including me, uses squares and hexagons. And for good reason! They actually tesselate uniformly, which has the advantage of rules simplicity. However, in order to challenge myself, I wanted to break out of those confines.

There are several ways that heptagons tesselate, but the most interesting to me was the one shown above. Essentially, the gaps between heptagons are “filled in” by irregular pentagons. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make use of them, but it was an interesting challenge to me.

My first attempt was a game called Angels & Demons. It accomplished everything I set out to accomplish. It was an asymmetric game. One side was the angels, the other the demons. The angels had a smaller force, a different move method, a different capture method, and a different goal than the demons. One side moved on the heptagons, the other on the pentagons, etc. But… at the end of the day, it just wasn’t all that fun to play. I knew I could do better.

Now, I’ll admit to a bias against games that start with an empty board. Which is odd, since some of the games I consider to be excellent start with an empty board. For whatever reason, I just prefer the idea of two “armies” (or in the case of NXS: Man-o-War, navies) facing off across a battlefield. So when I embarked on my second heptagon board attempt, I decided to challenge myself to design a game that starts with an empty board.

Several influences were floating around in my head. I’m not sure if there is any such thing as a totally unique mechanic at this point in history, so I’ll freely give credit where it is due. The custodial capture of the Tafl family was definitely on my mind. Stacking games, obviously, but particularly Tak. And the pick-up-and-sow mechanic of the Mancala family.

My thoughts began to coalesce around the idea that the heptagons would be where the pieces could be placed and move, and that the pentagons would be the “territory” that you were trying to capture by surrounding (custodial capture). I knew that I wanted a stacking game, as I find the mechanic intriguing. Finally, I wanted un-stacking to feel a bit like Mancala, where you “sow” the pieces one at a time as you go. I wanted the theme (or lack thereof) to be as primal as possible. Good vs. Evil. Shortened to three letters with no vowels as a nod to NXS. Thus EVL was born.

Thanks to some playtesting, and some excellent suggestions from play-testers, the rules have evolved somewhat from the original. In particular, the original version only allowed unstacking straight down a row, not across them. But that was limiting some really interesting tactics (as pointed out by a play-tester).

And so, we come to the final version of EVL, as described in the rules found here. I am very pleased with the final version, and I plan to release a 3D printed version this fall (2021).

A sandbox version created by Roman Ondrus is available here.

Random Goodness

If you’ve never heard of Chess960, I can hardly blame you. It is a somewhat obscure variant. I won’t replicate the Wikipedia article here. Suffice it to say, the idea came from the famous grand master Bobby Fischer. In order to get to a high level of chess play, you have to memorize a large number of openings. Some find this rote memorization to have a negative effect on creativity and skill. “Fischer’s goal was to eliminate what he considered the complete dominance of openings preparation in classical chess, replacing it with creativity and talent.” To facilitate this, Fischer proposed randomizing the back row of pieces.

I am not a chess player, but I was immediately fascinated by the idea of Chess960 when I first read about it, and felt the concept would be very applicable to NXS. In fact, NXS is far more suited to a random starting setup than Chess (in fact I included the loose idea of a random opening position as an official variant from the beginning). The nature of Chess dictates that you must have a front row of Pawns, you should have one Bishop on each color square, the King should be between the Rooks so that he may castle, etc. NXS has far fewer constraints. In reality, NXS has no constraints as to piece placement. But as I began experimenting with the concept, I found that practicality dictates a few small concessions.

The following assumes we are discussing a medium game setup between two players. The rotation of the pieces are not randomized, the standard front facing is used in all cases.

There are 14 pieces in NXS:

• 3 @ Merchant (3-0)
• 3 @ Cutter (3-2)
• 2 @ Man-o-War (5-4)
• 2 @ Frigate (4-3)
• 2 @ Corvette (4-2)
• 2 @ Brigantine (4-2s)

As discussed previously, two-player games of NXS are best with a single Merchant per player. That brings us to 12 pieces. However, that one Merchant is critical to the unique character of a game of NXS, so I want to ensure that each player always gets one. We’ll set it aside. This bring us to 11 pieces, of which 9 are randomly chosen. The Merchant is added back in, and (initially) the positions of all 10 pieces (within the standard board layout pattern) were chosen at random.

The first game I played against an opponent resulted in an interesting conundrum. A single Man-o-War was (randomly) placed in the back rank. This resulted in a very unsatisfying situation. This piece is (by design) so very slow. Both my opponent and I hardly used the piece. In the standard medium game setup, the Man-o-War is purposely placed front and center (the b1 hex). Here, it is a very useful piece for area control.

And so, much like in Chess960, a little order in the randomness makes for a better result.

My current implementation is to remove all Merchant and Man-o-War pieces. Eight of the remaining nine pieces are chosen at random. A single Man-o-War is placed at b1. A single Merchant is added, and the positions of these nine pieces are randomized and placed into the standard medium game layout. Obviously, this is more easily accomplished with a computer, but you can also get the same effect at home by randomly drawing slips of paper with the pieces names written on them.

As the name implies, Chess960 has 960 possible starting positions. Calculating permutations is not exactly my strong suit, but if I have it correct, I believe that NXS (following the given parameters) has 68,040 possible starting positions.

But calling it NXS-68040 seems a step to far, no?

Addendum: I don’t plan to implement the short game random setup on Board Game Arena. But if you wanted to play at home, I would recommend taking out all but one Merchant, both Man-o-War pieces, and one Cutter. Then randomly select seven of the remaining pieces. This gives 10,080 possible starting setups. I’m not going to try to calculate the long game. I would recommend placing the two Man-o-War pieces at d15 and d5, taking out two Merchants, and randomizing the remaining pieces.

Influences: Part 2

In creating NXS, I wanted to create something that would combine the ideas of two armies attacking one another, with the fluid goal of capturing enemy territory.

Obviously, Chess was an influence. I wanted different pieces to have different movement characteristics. One of the few drawbacks of Terrace is that all of your pieces move in the same way. It seemed that the best way to have different “personalities” for each piece was to transfer that complexity from rules to the shape of the pieces (much the way Terrace had transferred it to the shape of the board). Originally I had conceived of hex-shaped pieces with different markings (somewhat like dominoes), but that quickly became the short and tall side pattern you see today.

Being able to move in the direction of the tall side was obvious.  Once I decided on that, simple math told me how far they could go (the number of short sides).  I felt that that gave each piece a nice balance between maneuverability, power, and speed. Sure, the 5-4 piece is a powerhouse, but it is slow. This also meant either not having a 3-0 piece (too weak), or making it invincible. I chose invincibility, and I really think that piece makes the game much more challenging and interesting than without it.

I choose hexagonal boards mainly because they weren’t squares, and they interlock cleanly. Sounds silly I suppose, but that was really all there was to it. I also liked the idea that each hex had more “liberties” than a square. Six sides rather than four. And although they don’t directly connect, there is no reason you can’t go diagonally out of the corner of a hex (see the capture rules), for 12 total liberties.  That diagonal is a knight-like jump, really, but having to jump two intervening spaces influenced how I handled blocking captures (one of my favorite rules). The ability to jump your own piece, but not an enemy piece was inspired by a similar Terrace concept (moving on the same terrace).

Deciding on how to capture territory was more of a challenge. I originally had one big board, but felt that I wanted more than 61 hexes (8 across), and that 9 across was just getting too large. I eventually decided that each player would just have their own board of 37 hexes. This also created the happy side-effect of being able to have three-player games! Each player having their own board also helped me decide on a territory capture strategy influenced by Reversi/Othello. Surround the enemy territory on both sides; either with two pieces, or with a piece and your territory.

Read Part 1

Influences: Part 1

So what was I trying to accomplish when I came up with the idea for NXS? What influences led me down the path that would eventually become NXS?

As I’ve already discussed, my inspiration for creating my own game was Terrace. I genuinely liked the idea of a game with much simpler rules than, say, Chess (one of Terrace’s key principles). Don’t get me wrong, I love Chess just as much as the next person, but the rules can be a bit daunting at first.

I was also learning Go at the time (and I had played Reversi/Othello in the past). I really enjoyed the idea of a more fluid goal like territory, as opposed to chasing the king in Chess. But I still liked the idea of two armies facing each other across a game board, as opposed to starting empty like most territory capture games.

It seemed to me that most games I had heard of fell roughly into those two categories; set up armies and try to capture a key piece or space on the board, or start with an empty board and try to fill or capture territory (getting a certain number of pieces in a row being a variant of this, in my opinion). So I set out to create a hybrid of these two concepts.

20 years!

I realized recently that I’ve probably been working on NXS for about 20 years!

I mean… 20 years, man.  That’s a long time.

Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t been *actively* working on it all that time.  The game has been relatively fully-formed and gathering dust, as they say, most of that time.  I’d drag it out of the closet occasionally, and strong-arm one of my friends into playing a game or two.  Or I’d get a burst of enthusiasm and work furiously on one of the three computer versions.  But all-in-all, from conception to today, it’s been about 20 years.

Putting it out in front of the general public.  Actively trying to get eyes on it.  3D printing a prototype.  Those are pretty big steps for me, and I’m excited to see it happening.

A bit on the history of NXS

I was inspired to create my own strategy board game because of the work of two men who I met many years ago.

They invented a brilliant game called Terrace.  Like so many others, I’d seen the game sitting on a table in the background of Ten Forward on Star Trek: TNG.  I thought it was a prop until I spotted it in the store of a local science museum (OMSI).  I was thrilled to discover that it was not only a real game, but that it had simple and elegant rules that belied a complex and deep game.

I was even more excited to discover that the inventors (Buzz Siler and Anton Dresden) lived quite close to my home town.  I fired off an email, like any good fan-boy, gushing about their wonderful game, inquiring about a computer version, etc.

As it turned out, they were very close to releasing a computer version.  Buzz was kind enough to invite me to come over to his home and try it out.  I met him and Anton, and gave them my impressions of the computer version.  They were even kind enough to give me a pre-release copy (on floppy disk, ah the good old days).

That experience stuck in my brain for a few years.  If these local guys could create their own strategy game, why couldn’t I?

Thus the kernel of the idea that became NXS was formed.

Welcome!

Welcome to “the NXS nexus” (super clever, isn’t it?)

This blog will likely be used for random musings on NXS, its development, strategy tips, commentary on games, etc.

Hopefully, it will also be a place for community engagement.