colors_tcg | Colors Galactic Games: Game 3

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Colors Galactic Games: Game 3 - Infrastructure

Captain Aoi-sama created by Nuge, lovable battleships by DMM and included by yours truly because he could

Our journey towards the far ends of the galaxy has already advanced to the furthest reaches and beyond, so it's time to start thinking about what we'll do about the territory our fleet has already acquired. And for that, we need to establish...

Infrastructure.

Meet the grid, our gracious host for this game. It represents a galactic map of a sector your fleet controls and every player is a base commander trying to establish a trade route and roads in general to keep contact with the other bases in the sector. And that, dear players, is your objective in this game.

Establish contact with two of your teammates on your team's grid to pass the game and score a point for your team.

And now, let me tell you how...

Gameplay

As you can see from the grid above, its rows are marked by numbers while its columns have letters on them. Every team has their own grid (that I will include in your team's comment threads for easy viewing) where every player in that team has their own starting square that's colored and has their name on it. This square is your own personal base where you'll begin the game and where you'll return every time you complete a route (more on that below).

Now, how to move on the grid? We are a card game, so the answer here, as in so many other things here, is... cards.

You can move horizontally or vertically, in one direction per turn but as many squares at a time as you'd like or are able to before hitting Space Debris (more on that below). In our example picture, Player 1's starting base is in square D04, on the upper left corner of the grid. They decide to start building a route towards the right since that's where most of their teammates are and decide square WX04 is a good place to stop. Player 1 would therefore comment on their team's thread via the form included at the end of this post and include in it:

-their starting point (either your base or your destination point from your last turn),
-which direction they're going into (up, right, down, left)
-which square they're going to stop at (needs to be in the same row or column)
-and include a card with the number and first letter in its deckname that are the same as their destination square. (There's one additional point concerning people on Precious tier or above, but more on that later.)

In this case, Player 1 would need to submit a card whose deckname started with either W or X and that had the number 04 (card numbers only, numbers included in decknames do not count).

The examples will have Player 1 continue on their merry way straight away, but in the game proper 2 teammates need to go in-between before the same person can act again. Also, every player has 5 actions to take.

Once you start a route somewhere, you will keep building that route and picking up at the point you arrived at on your last turn until one of three conditions is met.

The first one is hitting someone else's base, at which point you've completed a route and are returned to your home square. Once a route is completed, you cannot do anything with it any more and are returned home. Basically, whenever it's your turn to act, you're building an unfinished route that may or may not turn into a finished one on that turn.

(Also note that, in this example pic, since Player 1 built the entire route while Player 4 didn't do anything, if a third player joined this route in any manner without any help from Player 4, that third player and Player 1 would score points due to being part of a three-base connection but Player 4 would not. In other words, only players who have somehow taken part in building (or joining) at least one completed route can score a point, but the bases of people who haven't done anything are also counted as a connection to everyone who is connected to them.

Also, after you've been returned to your home square, you can go build an another route, but it needs to be in a different direction. You can't use completed routes to travel or cross over them, any contact with a completed route results in you joining it and being returned home. (Though you can, theoretically, join the same route twice for more cards, as long as you do it without using any square twice.)

The second way to complete a route is either hitting someone else's incomplete route yourself or someone hitting yours on their turn. When this happens, a route is established and both of you are returned back to your respective home squares to start building new ones. However, the person completing a route needs to have a destination square belonging to the route.

In this pic, Player 6 could not use a card starting with W or X but with a number 05-20, it'd need to be numbered 04. Think of it in terms of cost efficiency: if you already have a highway on your front yard, it'd be a bit of a waste to prepare an army of road workers to make a 2000-kilometer long road to cross the already existing one. (it doesn't always work like this but please bear with me, here)

However, the moment an incompleted road is completed at any point, it will take the shortest possible form between the two people who completed it and cut any excess parts. This may sound a bit confusing, so let's go a bit backwards. Player 1's start goes all the way to Player 6, but if Player 3 decides to appear before Player 6 has a turn and join Player 1's route...

...well, basically, this happens. Player 1's roadworkers notice they can contact someone as close as point IJ04, so they consider the road done there and have no more use for points K04-WX04 (that to their knowledge don't result in contact with anyone) in it any more, establishing a link between Players 1 and 3 but kind of leaving Player 6 hanging out to dry.

However, this only applies to incompleted routes, so if Player 3 waits for Player 6 to contact Player 1's route first and only joins after that...

...well, no sense in dismantling a completed route, so Players 1 and 6 get to keep their completed route, Player 3 joins in and is returned home and all three of them score since they are now part of a network contacting three bases. But what about Players 2, 4 and 5?

Let's say Players 2 and 5 are taking a long nap, resulting in a bit of trouble for Player 4 who has them as their closest neighbors. Now, this could spell trouble if this map was harder to navigate in, but as it stands...

...no worries, despite this game starting off with three people scoring at once establishing any kind of contact with a network of three people or more scores you a point. Player 4 could have built a route into Player 3's base instead but still scored. As long as some kind of line is formed, you're in the clear.

Rinse, repeat, that's the basic gameplay, just one more thing.

Space Debris

You may have wondered what the black squares named Asteroids in the pics do (now renamed Space Debris to avoid confusion with the Brown Asteroid Fleet who are nice and lovable, unlike the Space Debris). The answer is...

...that they're there to block your way and be assholes in general. Space Debris will block your progress and can't be bypassed so you'll stop at the square before it and need to change course on your next turn but as a consolation price you can use any destination point after Space Debris, including its own square, to reach it, in this pic Player 2 could use a card starting with S and with the numbers 01-05 to get to square S06. The danger they pose hasn't been made imminent in this example but I'm counting on you to hate them in the game itself where they're a bit more numerous.

Certain Rather Important Points, Extremely Sorry

First of all, you don't need to wait for me to respond after taking your turn, your teammates can respond immediately after and you can therefore spam as much as you'd like, but a word of warning...

I will be making regular checks to award cards and see if all moves submitted here are legal and if there's an illegal one (wrong starting point, destination point that's not in the same row or column as your current position, offered card does not match your destination point), I will ask the person to fix the problem to change the move into a legal one and if they can't or otherwise don't do so, any route completed with such a move will be considered illegal and any points scored off that particular route aren't counted. Therefore I urge you all to be careful and double-check your moves because someone making an illegal move and four other people connecting to it before anyone notices will be rather troublesome for us all.

Whew. Sounds a bit complicated but no need to worry about it too much, I'll also be keeping track of your movements to help out. Starting point, destination point, card that shares the first letter and number of your destination point. Remember these and it'll be fine.

Second, some of you will start from the edge of the map which can be kinda disadvantageous with less directions to go, so to help you out at least a bit, if you have nowhere to go without joining your own routes but still have turns remaining, you can cross the edge of the map and come out of the other side (so if you're on row 20 at the bottom, you can go up and come out of row 01 to continue downward instead). Incidentally, this is why direction is included in the answer form.

Primary and Fruits tier players (since people leveling up can't really be predicted, I'm going to count this from your levels upon signing up for the League), you're good to go, happy connecting.

Precious and above, however... while it is a bit hard to predict how, exactly, everyone's game will go, you guys will generally have an easier time navigating this grid than people with less cards to spare so you'll have a handicap. For you guys...

Your card will need to be one of the Edge Colors (the first and last two in our order for them in Colors, namely Red, Orange, Brown and Gray) if you've moving vertically.
Your card will need to be one of the Center Colors (the middle four in our usual order, so Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple) if you've moving horizontally.
If you're playing a special, both colors are counted separately so if you're playing one that has one of both of these categories, it can be used for moving in any direction and if they're both the same, you move in the direction specified above.

Now it's over for you guys, too. No more rules. Just freedom. And grids. And rewards:

Using a turn: lose 1 card (for moving) but gain 2 random cards
Joining a completed route, completing a route yourself but it resulted in cutting off a part of it: 2 random cards in addition to "Using a turn"
Completing a route yourself, no squares cut off: 3 random cards in addition to "Using a turn"

And a couple of team-based achievements. They're not necessary for passing by any means, but they're there for those challenge seekers.

Interplanetary Ring (above): every team member connected straight to others' bases, no joining completed routes (at least until achievement has been checked and confirmed), no squares cut off from routes: 4 random cards + 1 crayon
Galactic Highway (below): has one route between two bases but can't pass through any other bases, every team member is joined to this route: 4 random cards + 1 crayon
Whatever Road Works (not pictured): every team member is connected into one network somehow but neither of the above conditions is met: 3 random cards

And a couple of useful things. First, the answer form:

(please include both the name and image of the card, for Precious and above you don't need to include color as long as you remember to use the correct one)

And finally, to help you guys out...

A GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF YOUR TEAM'S GRID + PROGRESS OF YOUR ROUTES (will try to keep up to date regularly but due to security reasons am somewhat hesitant to let anyone else edit it, so if any teams want to keep one to have it up to date faster, feel free to borrow whatever you want from here)

This game, alongside the rest of the Colors Galactic Games, ends at Monday, August 17th 12:00 GMT.