Spent a good chunk of the day working on my board game (currently “Hive”, but I’ll need to come up with a different name, as that one’s taken by another perfectly fine game). It’s just about ready to go now……

Well, that seems to me like it would be a pretty big problem… There were a few strategies that would pretty much guarantee a win to one of the players in earlier versions, but I think that most of those are either ironed out, or too deep for your average human player to follow. I tend to think that kind of turn/score analysis is a pretty good idea for any game, but I also tend to be lazy about actually doing it, so, there you go.

There is a definite advantage to going second right now, although that advantage has been whittled down through the development process. This is where that analysis would do the most good – I feel like this latest round of tweaks has mostly squashed that advantage, but only more testing will tell.

In your game, I would relate this to how many points you can gain with the smallest piece. If there is a seven on the board, the best move might be to play an eight to net 14 points (or 22 (8+14) depending on how you look at it).

I don’t really think there is a problem with your game. I was just wondering if there was a fool proof strategy out there that might guarantee a win every time.

Also, how has turn order had an effect on play? To me, it seems like if you go second, you have an advantage. If you save a double-arrow “9″ for the last move you are guaranteed to capture something.