Back to the Wall

That's right! We're doing it again!

This game is a Best of 3 Rounds. Round 1 will be played on Once, Round 2 on Twice, Round 3 on Thrice.

This game is played across 3 boards of increasing size, named “Once”, “Twice” and “Thrice”.

In each board, players will start with 2 pieces in opposite corners of the board. (circles top row, squares bottom row)

(Grunkle will be top left + bottom right, charge will be top right + bottom left)

Each board will have some 4 pre-placed walls and will be slightly different sizes.

On each turn players will submit 1 direction for each of their pieces along with their walls.

Each player attempt to place 1 wall on Once, 2 walls on Twice, and 3 walls on Thrice.

However walls will not be placed if:

Walls close off a corner from being connected to any other corner on all boards.

2 walls would be placed diagonally or orthogonally adjacent on “once”. 2 walls would be placed orthogonally adjacent on “twice”.

All squares next to a piece would become walls on all boards.

To formalize the above rules:

The check for if walls are to be removed for blocking corner access is for each individual piece, does removing it cause it to be unblocked.

If it does, remove that piece, if it doesn't do not remove that piece.

In the case where removing just 1 piece would not unblock a corner, this is repeated but checking every pair of walls. (then a triple of walls etc)

"would be placed" for the second 2 rules is based on submissions, not consequences of rule 1.

We resolve the boards as follows:

Add all walls to the board that don’t contradict placement rules.

Move all pieces simultaneously, travelling 1 square at a time until they hit a wall or the border.

When a piece goes over a square, it captures it. Squares can be recaptured.

If the direction a players piece cannot move in the direction they submitted, it will move in the direction that makes it travel the furthest on uncaptured squares.

If this is a tie, it will go to whichever direction is closer to the intended direction.

If this is a tie, goes towards the direction which is closest to the pieces starting corner directions.

If 2 pieces are on the same path but opposite directions, they go through each other.

If they would occupy the same square during this process (and are from different players), that square isn’t captured.

A Round ends when any of these conditions are met:

• 1 Player has captured over 50% of the remaining capturable squares (walls are factored in as reducing number of capturable squares) (round end position)
• All 4 pieces are in separate regions of the board so that no 2 pieces can reach each other
• There are no more valid ways to place the allotted number walls (2 per turn for once, 4 for twice, 6 for thrice)
• 25 Turns have passed

As soon as any of these are met, the player that controls more squares wins round.

If this is a tie, then the DMO wins the round.

The first player to win 2/3 rounds wins the DeathMatch.