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L. The list of official nominations for the variant-by-committee.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

John Lawson wrote on Sun, Jul 13, 2003 01:31 AM UTC:

Here's my two cents:

1 - Towers can split at will into two Towers of arbitrary size by moving
part of the Tower as a regular move.
2 - The moving part of the Tower can capture.
3 - A moving Tower can recombine with a separate Tower whose square it can
move to without hinderance or penalty, even if it split from another Tower
that turn.

Here's the different part:

4 - An Eaglet flanked by two Towers of any size (even different) is
promoted to a single piece Tower.

This promotion is easier, but it only results in a strong minor piece. 
The largest number possible is 16 per side, including the original Tower. 
If each Eaglet were promoted to a full height Tower, it is mathematically
possible for each side to require 2,048 draughtsmen.

Daniel Roth wrote on Sun, Jul 13, 2003 11:16 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

There seems to be some troubles with the Towers around.
Some solutions I can provide:
1st limit numbers of towers per player to 4. A pawn can not promote to a
tower piece if there are already 4 towers for that player around.
2nd can a tower split and merge with another tower as one move.
3rd pawns promotes only to 1 piece towers.
4th limit tower heights to 8

Doug Chatham wrote on Sun, Jul 13, 2003 12:20 PM UTC:

There doesn't seem to be much of a consensus about what to do about the Towers of Hanoi. My opinions: 1. A Tower can split and attack in the same move. 2. A Tower may split and merge in the same move. 3. An Eaglet can only promote to a Tower if flanked on both sides by Towers of the same size. Also, the Eaglet promotes to a Tower of the same size as those Towers flanking it. 4. We should have a vote to choose among the various options that have been mentioned.

Doug Chatham wrote on Sun, Jul 13, 2003 12:23 PM UTC:

Oops,forgot one issue. 5. Eight is the maximum height of a Tower of Hanoi.

John Lawson wrote on Sun, Jul 13, 2003 04:33 PM UTC:

There's another logical possibility also:

Eaglets may NOT promote to Towers of Hanoi.

But I think it would be more fun if they can.

📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Mon, Jul 14, 2003 03:08 AM UTC:

I like Doug's thoughts. The proposed alternative of allowing any two Towers to promote an Eaglet to a one-stone Tower also has some merit.

L. Lynn Smith wrote on Mon, Jul 14, 2003 07:54 AM UTC:

Here's my idea about the Tower of Hanoi.

1. Limited to 8 stones
2. May either merge or break, but not both during a move.
3. Can capture when breaking.
4. Eaglets promotion is dependent upon the specific size of the Towers and
promotes only to that size.

Reasoning:

1. Having the starting size as the maximum is logical.  There needs to be
a limit so that players can develop some modicum of strategy.

2. Preventing the Tower from both breaking and merging in the same move
means that the individual pieces will block the movement of each other
without fully merging.  So a player in order to increase the power of a
blocking Tower must either fully merge with it or take two moves to
preform a partial merge.  This can easily result with the use of the
Cube.

3. Since the full Tower piece could take that particular cell, the partial
Tower should also have that right.

4. Promotions should be rare.  By having promotion to Towers as specific,
this would definitely limit them.  If the players were allowed to create
full Towers from non-specifec partial Towers then the game would devolve
into a Tower War.  And allowing the Eaglet to promote to 1 stone from
non-specific partial Towers would quickly consume them, and again devolve
the game into a Tower War, only less so.

BTW, I like the Rook with the camel step.  It's simple and fits the
overall theme of the game.  Too much spice can spoil the soup.

George Duke wrote on Tue, Aug 28, 2007 10:28 PM UTC:

The main Commenters and proponents for various favoured forms here in early 2003 were Glenn Overby, Doug Chatham, John Lawson, Peter Aronson, and Jianying Ji. On 8x8 Pawns became Eaglets (unpromoting), Knights were replaced by Mules also colour-changing, Bishops Diagonal Bypassers, Rook additional power of one-path Camel, Queen = Tower of Hanoi, and Kings unable to castle have full-spectrum two-step leap initially. (Rook here is similar to what 'FatallyFlawedM/C' thread is developing with respect to Mao and Moa breaking down Knight's move to go respectively with R & B)

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