00463 Day 3 Map, the game

So then, Map.

I'll be posting about this again, mainly because we've played a few games and it was pretty awesome. All that's really concerning me now is that I've re-invented the wheel and it's indistinguishable from any of the old wheels. In other words, someone else must have thought of this (and in fact, did I see it somewhere before, forget about it and then drag it back through my subconscious as what I perceive to be an original idea?).

Anyhow, this was all the result of wanting a game which used only basic stuff, like paper, pens, coins or dice, or any combination of all four.

I'm figuring that a time-lapse of the game play would be just dandy, from an info-mercial perspective. In the meantime, here's what one of the games ended up looking like:


So, a 2 player game, then.

In a nutshell:
Both players collaborate to make a map with 21 counties. Once the map is made, players move around the board, capturing countries as they do so. Once all the countries have been claimed, the player with the most countries is declared the winner.

You will need:
Two pencils (one in a pinch)
Two small different coins
Paper

WARNING - THIS NEXT BIT IS A RECORD OF THE RULES OF A GAME AND SO IT'S A BIT DULL.
WAIT FOR THE TIME LAPSE 'COS A VIDEO PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS SQUARE.

How it works:
Draw a circle in the middle of the paper. This is he first country.
Toss the coin to decide who goes first.
The first player appends an arc to the circle, making sure that both ends of the arc touch the circle, so that it makes a shape in which a coin will fit. This is the second country.
The second player draws an arc who's ends touch either, both or none of the two existing countries (man, I'm going to have to unconfuse that thing). Again, the new shape should be large enough to contain a a coin and predictably enough, the is the third country.
The players continue to add countries in this manner until each has made ten countries each, making 21 in all.
The only requirement is that, at the time of drawing, a country may share a border with a maximum of four countries.
On drawing their last country, the first player places a 'O' in that country with a pencil and places their coin on top of the 'O'.
Player two then completes their last country, places an 'X' inside it and puts their coin on top of the 'X'.
Players then take turns to move their coin to an adjacent country, marking the new country as their own.
You can move onto a previously marked/claimed country, you just don't get anything out of it and it's kind of a waste of a move.
If you can move on to a country occupied by your opponent's coin, you take their coin and send them off to any country on the board that takes your fancy. You then claim that country as your own by scrubbing out their mark and placing your own.

The basic strategies seem to be, minimise the time you spend on previously claimed countries and try to avoid getting taken. But there's way more to it than that, of course.