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Two of several Games inspired by Kanare Kato's 'Squish' Originally 'Squish' was a unification game with step movement toward a friendly piece in-line, possibly involving a capture. 'Advanced Squish' added a requirement on non-capturing steps for the piece to become part of a larger group. (Singletons were exempted.) -- 'Keep-a-Riding' and 'Conflagration' differ from 'Squish' by being explicitly stalemate games: Last to move wins or loses, respectively. They also differ by using slide captures, and by not including the 'Squish' core principle that requires movement toward in-line friendly pieces. Instead, they require the step move to bring the moving piece into new contact with another friendly piece. They typically end with only a few pieces on the board, and one player may be entirely eliminated. 'Keep-a-Riding' is themed as a 'last man standing' team demolition derby. But, knocking out an opponent's piece can only be done with pieces that cannot step to become part of a larger group. 'Conflagration', is themed 'fighting fire with fire': Getting eliminated is a win. Containment, where none of your flame pieces can move, is also a win. Conflagration has 2 subvariants 'Firestorm' and 'BackFire' in which the choice of moves that each flame piece can take are prioritized. - BackFire is shorter, more aggressive, because a flame piece must capture (become a 'backfire') if it can. - Firestorm requires a flame piece to step to join its own kind if it can, leading to a slower elimination of the flames in the end game.

Rules

Setup: Pieces of each color are distributed symmetrically on every 3rd cell of the board.
(For a game on an order 4 board, the outer cells are not used.)
Four game options are provided:

1. Keep-a-riding - Goal: Last to move.
Play: No passing. Pieces step to join larger group. When they can't step to join larger group, they can slide to capture.

2. Conflagration, - Goal: Win when you you have no fire left or can't make a move.
Play: No passing. A piece can either take a single step to join a larger group, or slide to capture an opponent's piece.

3. Conflagration, - Firestorm Variant (longer)
Rule restriction: A piece can only slide to capture when it cannot step to join a larger group.

4. Conflagration, - Backfire Variant (shorter),
Rule restriction: A piece can only step to join a larger group when it cannot slide to capture.

Author

Dale W. Walton

Creation date

2021-10-14

Ludeme Description

Conflagration and Keep-a-riding.lud

Concepts

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