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Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸💡📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Nov 13, 2008 01:58 AM UTC:
No, I'm saying that early prototypes of Storm the Ivory Tower were drawish. This is mentioned in the history section of the page.

Here is an alternative move for the Ninny I've been thinking about while meditating. Once the Ninny moves one space, it could move one more space to either adjacent space in a 2x2 square with its origin space. So an orthogonal move would be followed by a 90 degree turn left or right, while a diagonal move would be followed by a 45 degree turn backward. This would keep the Ninny from moving more than one space away at a time while giving it some more freedom of movement. This would be in accord with both the Smess rule that a Ninny moves only one space per turn and the Xiang Qi rule that a Pawn moves only one space per turn. And it would be sufficient to allow the Ninny to enter the enemy Ivory Tower and check the Brain.

But the current enhanced move of the Ninny also has its rationale. In Smess, Ninnies get to promote to Numskulls upon reaching a Numskull space. There is no longer promotion of this kind in Storm the Ivory Tower, but the enhanced movement of the Ninny does give it some of the power of a Numskull. So this is in accord with Smess, and it provides a viable alternative to giving the Ninny more directions of movement, which is not so feasible in this game given that the arrows determine the directions of movement.