Introduction
Welcome to the network TAMSK server. TAMSK is the second game in Kris Burm's wholly remarkable Project GIPF series. The actual board game is played with egg-timers as playing pieces, and succeeds in using time as a strategic element of the game. Wow!
Any e-mail version is of necessity a pale imitation of the original, but I have attempted to capture the strategic elements - if not the excitement - of the board game.
The challenge command is described below. Other commands are the same for all pbmserv games.
tamsk challenge userid1 userid2
starts a game of TAMSK between userid1 and userid2.
Rules
Set-up
Each player has 3 timers, labelled ABC and XYZ for no particularly good reason, and 32 discs.
You are playing Tamsk
Next move: 20 seconds
D7 Player 1 (ABC)
____ 32 rings remaining
C6 / \ E6
____/ 1 \____
B5 / \ C--- / \ F5
____/ 1 \____/ 1 \____
A4 / \ / \ / \ G4
____/ 1 \____/ 2 \____/ 1 \____
/ \ / \ / \ / \
/ 1 \____/ 2 \____/ 2 \____/ 1 \
\ Z--- / \ / \ / \ Y--- /
\____/ 2 \____/ 3 \____/ 2 \____/
/ \ / \ / \ / \
/ 1 \____/ 3 \____/ 3 \____/ 1 \
\ / \ / \ / \ /
\____/ 2 \____/ 4 \____/ 2 \____/
/ \ / \ / \ / \
/ 1 \____/ 3 \____/ 3 \____/ 1 \
\ / \ / \ / \ /
\____/ 2 \____/ 3 \____/ 2 \____/
/ \ / \ / \ / \
/ 1 \____/ 2 \____/ 2 \____/ 1 \
\ A--- / \ / \ / \ B--- /
\____/ 1 \____/ 2 \____/ 1 \____/
\ / \ / \ /
A1 \____/ 1 \____/ 1 \____/ G1
\ / \ /
B1 \____/ 1 \____/ F1
\ X--- /
C1 \____/ E1
Player 2 (XYZ)
D1 32 rings remaining
Objective
The winner is the player who gets rid of the most discs.
Moving
Each turn, you do the following:
- move one of your timers to an adjacent space
- flip the timer over
- drop a ring over the new position
Each space can contain a certain number of rings (the numbers on the board show the spare capacity); once a space is full, you can't move there any more.
On your first three turns, you must move each of your timers once; so after three turns, the sand is running in each timer. After that point, if any timer runs out of sand then it is dead: it cannot move again, and permanently blocks the space it is in.
The 15-second timer
In addition to the pieces, there is a 15-second timer to prevent your opponent from sitting and waiting until you run out of sand in all your timers. You start the timer in the opponent's turn, and he must move before it runs out of sand.
Confusion warning: You can't turn the 15-second timer over until it is empty, so if you move faster than your maximum allotted time, you give extra time to your opponent, hence each move must be made in between 15 and 30 seconds, depending on how quickly your opponent moves. A few examples:
- You have 15 seconds to make your move; you move in 10 seconds. There are 5 seconds remaining before the sand runs out so you can start the timer in your opponent's turn. Your opponent gets 5 + 15 = 20 seconds to make his move.
- You have 20 seconds to make your move; you move in 1 second. We assume that your opponent had just started the timer at the end of your turn; he gets 15s + 15s = 30 seconds.
- You have 15 seconds to make your move; you move in 15 seconds. Your opponent gets 15 seconds too.
Notation
Each board location is denoted by a column letter (a-g), and height (1-7). A move is in the form:
[start location]-[end location]/[time spent per move]
e.g. a1-a2/13