DMC - Trax

Summary

Place tiles on the grid, creating a closed loop, but be mindful of forced moves, as a single mistake can cost you the game.

Gameplay

The game is played on an infinite square grid, using 2 types of tiles: Straight and Curved.

All of the played tiles can be fit into a rectangle, aligned with the grid. The smallest of such rectangles is the Bounding Box.

One player will be playing as Purple, other player will be White.

Both types of tiles have both a Purple road and a White road on it. Straight tile connects opposite sides of a tile with a same colored road. Curved tile connects adjacent sides of the tile with the same colored road. By rotating these two tiles it is possible to connect any edge to any other edge with a color of your choice.

The goal of the game is to form a Loop or a Line using their colored roads. Creating either pattern wins you the game, even if you create one of the patterns for the opponent as well.

A Loop is a continuous path of roads that connects with itself.

A Line is a continuous path of roads that connects two opposite edges of the Bounding Box.

⚠️ In addition to the above, the Bounding Box has to be at least 8 tiles long in the direction of the Line.

Before the game starts, Amaranth, as the player with higher priority, will select the First Player.

First player starts the game by putting either tile in any orientation on the empty grid.

✏️ After that, players alternate placing tiles on the empty spaces on the grid, adjacent to at least one other tile by edge. In addition, the color of the road on the connecting edge(s) has to match the other tile.

⚠️ After a tile is placed, the board is checked for Forced Moves. If there is only one possible tile and orientation that can be placed a specific spot in the grid (i.e. if there are 2 adjacent pieces to the empty spot, which have a same colored road adjacent to the empty tile), that tile is automatically filled in. This can cause a chain reaction of multiple tiles being placed one after the other after a single turn.

🔍 Here is an example of one tile being placed causing 2 more tiles to be forced.

Mulligan

To facilitate a better game, both players are given 1 Mulligan item to be used once in the game.

This item can be used at any time during your turn.

Using the Mulligan will cause your and your opponent's last turn to be rewound.

The Mulligan item can be used even after the game ends. Naturally, players will use their mulligan item immediately after the opponent wins the game, but you are free to use it earlier.

Game End

The game ends when a loop or line is made and the opponent has used their Mulligan item.

The player whose color the loop/line is wins the DM

The winner of the DM gets 12 garnets.

Time Controls

This game has no hidden information.

Make your moves in #dm7-game-room

To submit, name a coordinate you want to place a tile in and the 2 sides it connects.

The first valid move will be taken, unless it is taken back within 5 seconds.

This game will use a one grace time system.

Players will have 60 seconds to make their move, and each player can go above this limit once. After that, the player has an unlimited amount of time to decide on their move. "Unlimited" in this case means "at most 10 minutes" to prevent stalling.

When the player has decided, they should check that both the host and the opponent are present, after which they can post their move and the game can continue.

If a player misses the 60 second period again, they concede the DM.

Using the mulligan item will restart your timer, but will not give back your grace if you have used it.

*️⃣ In an extremely rare edge case where placing your piece would cause forced moves that result in an empty tile with 3 adjacent sides of the same color, the initial move is considered illegal.

That player's timer is restarted and they are prompted to make a different move. Either player doing this move from now on will be considered illegal and will not restart the timer.

As far as i'm aware, this situation can only occur if there is a hole in the game position. This edge case should never occur in a normal game.