Painting Pastiche

In this Match, each player will be tasked with painting a piece of wall as completely as possible, over the course of 6 rounds. Each round, the players will draft pentominoes that they can give to their opponents to use. The player that does the best job tessellating their pieces, as well as managing their resources, will win the Match.

The Pieces

This game uses the twelve unique pentominoes, as depicted below. Each pentomino is coloured differently, and has a unique formation. There is only one copy of each pentomino available at any point in time, and manipulating possession of the twelve pentominoes is vital for this Match.

The Draft

Each round begins with a draft, where the two players will take turns selecting pieces. The Death Match Opponent will decide who will draft first in the first round, and first drafter will alternate in subsequent rounds.

On a player's turn during the draft, they will select one of the available pentonimoes, and add it to their collection. Then, their opponent will take a turn, and this will continue until one player has six pentominoes. At this point, all undrafted pentominoes will be claimed by their opponent. At this point, the players are ready for the round to begin.

Piece Placement

Once the draft is completed, the bulk of the round will commence, with the placement of pieces occurring over three turns. In each turn, both players will select two of their pieces. One of the selected pieces will not be placed this turn, while the other will be presented to their opponent. When presenting a piece to your opponent, you may rotate or reflect it freely.

Then, each player will place the piece their opponent presented. When placing a piece, you may rotate it 90 degrees or reflect it horizontally or vertically. However, each player may only perform a total of two rotations or reflections during a turn. They may rotate once and reflect once, or rotate twice, or reflect twice. Further, they may choose to use both rotations/reflections on one piece, or use them on different pieces.

Once a player is satisfied with the rotation of the piece, they will then place them within their 9x10 grid that represents the wall they are painting. When placing a piece, the first piece must have at least one edge running along the edge of the grid. All further pieces must be placed so that the sum of all the paint added to the grid during the Match is contiguous. Pieces are permitted to overlap - overlapping squares will be coloured in black. Pieces may not stray out of the boundaries of the grid. An example of a round where each player placed three pieces is below:

Here, the left player has rotated the tan-coloured Z piece by 90 degrees, and the lavender-coloured R piece, while not rotating the W piece. Meanwhile, the right player has rotated the yellow-coloured V piece by 90 degrees two times, and has not moved the T or P pieces.

Continuing the Round

For the remaining two turns, each player will select one piece to not place, and one piece for their opponent to place, until both players have placed three pieces. Then, in each round except for the sixth, each player will have a choice of what to do with their remaining pieces. The choice is threefold:

1) Give the piece to your opponent. If you do this, your opponent begins the next round with that piece automatically in their hand. They do not have to draft for it. If you do this, you gain 1 Credit. 2) Return the piece to the draft. If you do this, the piece will be added to the pool of played pieces from the round, and can be drafted by either player into their pool of available pentominoes in the next round. 3) Retain the piece in your hand. If you do this, you will begin the next round with that piece automatically in your hand. If you do this, your opponent will gain 1 Credit. This number is doubled for each subsequent, consecutive, turn you have retained the piece, so if you retain the piece for four turns, on the fourth turn your opponent will gain 8 Credits.

Credits

Credits can be spent for three different effects during the game. When you do this, you will pay the Credits directly to your opponent. You may purchase these as many times as you are able, if you wish.

1) Double Turn. Pay 2 Credits during the draft phase to take two pentominoes on your turn, instead of one. You may not buy multiple Double Turns to take 3 or more pentominoes in one turn.

2) Rotation. Pay 1 Credit per additional rotation/reflection you would like to perform on a piece.

3) Exchange. Pay 2 Credits to exchange the pentomino presented with a pentomino from your hand. Your opponent still decides how to rotate or reflect the pentomino initially, and you may then use your rotations/reflections, either free or paid, on the piece.

End of Match & Scoring

Once six rounds are complete, the Match will conclude, and each player's wall will be evaluated for points. There are three different ways to score points, and one way to lose them.

1) The largest square of a player's wall that contains paint (black paint or non-black paint) without any missing pieces will score points equal to the edge length. So, if a player has a 6x6 square of paint with no missing spaces, that player will score 6 points.

2) Each pentomino that is both clearly defined, and completely surrounded by paint, will score. "Clearly defined" means that the pentomino cannot have any black paint within it (black paint being caused by painting over the same space twice), and cannot be orthogonally adjacent to any pentomino of the same colour - note that pentominoes of one shape are always the same colour, and each shape has a distinct colour from each other shape. Further, all spaces orthogonally adjacent to the pentomino must be painted. If the pentomino is clearly defined and surrounded, it will score 3 points, losing one point for each edge of the wall it touches (thus meaning a corner pentomino is worth 1 point).

3) Each credit a player has is worth 1 point.

4) Each space of the grid with no paint on it will result in a loss of 2 points.

Shown below is an example of scoring:

This player's score is calculated thusly:

1) The largest square is a 6x6 square, from the 3rd to the 8th rows. This wall scores 6 points.

2) Each of the three red P pentominoes scores 1 point. Each tan Z pentomino scores - the pentomino against the bottom edge scores 2, while the pentomino not against any edges scores 3. Both pink T pentominoes score 2, while the blue X pentomino scores 3. Each other pentomino either contains black squares, is adjacent to a pentomino of the same colour, or is adjacent to unpainted squares. This is a total of 15.

3) Hypothetically, let us say this player has 7 Credits.

4) This player has 3 unpainted squares, and will have 6 points deducted.

Therefore, the player's final score is 6 + 15 + 7 - 6 = 22 points.

Winning and Losing

The player with the higher score will win. In the event of a tie, the player that had the fewest unpainted squares will win. If this is tied, the player with the most leftover credits wins. If this ties, the player with the largest painted square wins. If this too is tied, then the first player to have achieved a score of 0 or higher at any point in the Match will win. If neither player ever achieved a score of 0, this threshold will be lowered by 10 points until one player achieves it.

Communication

Safe players are free to discuss this Death Match with the Death Match participants, up to the commencement of the live match. At that point, the Death Match Participants ought to be treated as being totally incommunicado.

Stakes

The winner of this Death Match will earn all of their opponents Garnets, as well as a position in the Final Six, successfully advancing into the final stretches of the season. Best of luck!