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introduction |
current events |
projects |
stuff
My father-in-law, Doug, and I played Ogres vs. Pixies and fixed the bugs. It is now quite engaging. Games are fast (around 30 minutes), the rules are easy to learn, and we kept learning new things about tactics so it didn't become boring even after several games.
The current version is called "Ogres vs. Pixies with a Carrion Crawler and Trees".
Here are the rules. (By the way, reading the rules by yourself isn't much fun. Better to find a friend, possibly for a play-by-e-mail game...)
2001-03-15: fixed bugs noted by Doug: the winning conditions were unnecessarily ambiguous and the Zone of Control Rule had been inadvertently omitted.
2006-09-20: rescued thanks to the Wayback Machine and edited for clarity, because Derek Pearcy expressed interest.
The Ogre player has 3 Ogres and 1 Carrion Crawler (which starts with only one segment).
The Pixie player has 12 Pixies and 1 Pixie King.
Is 23 by 13 hexes. You may be forgiven if you play on a board of a different size or shape, but that could change the balance of power dramatically as walls, corners, and dense forests of trees all give Ogres a big advantage.
They are green and there are zero or one per hex. They grow randomly (specifically, after the Ogre Player's turn, roll a 20-sided and a 12-sided die to randomly pick one hex on the lower-left-hand part of the board. If there is no tree there, then a tree grows there.). Everyone ignores them except Ogres, who eat them.
They are red and there are any number per hex. Whenever a Pixie or Ogre is killed, they turn into a Pixie Corpse or an Ogre Corpse respectively. They don't inhibit the movement of creatures. Various things can happen to them, described below.
The Pixies win if all the Ogres and Carrion Crawlers are dead. The Ogres win if the Pixie King is dead. Those are the winning conditions. It's a brutal world out there in the Pixie Forest.
Players take turns. The only other thing that happens is that after the Ogre player's turn is done and before the Pixie player's turn begins, a tree attempts to grow upon a randomly chosen hex.
On your turn, you may activate each of your creatures once. When a creature is activated it can move, and after moving it can attack.
During the creature's movement phase, it can move up to its "Move" number of hexes in any direction.
It cannot move onto a hex if it is occupied by another creature, but it can move onto a hex which contains a tree or a corpse.
In addition, if it moves onto a hex which is adjacent to an enemy creature, then its movement phase is ended. This is called "the Zone of Control rule" and it doesn't actually effect Ogres, Carrion Crawlers, or Pixie Kings, since they get to take only one step per movement phase anyway, but it has a great deal of effect on Pixies, who would otherwise be able to fly right past their enemies in a single movement phase.
There is an exception to the "Zone of Control" rule: the tail segments of a Carrion Crawler do not exert a Zone of Control, so a Pixie may fly right past the tail of a Carrion Crawler. The Head segment of a Carrion Crawler exerts a Zone of Control just like any other enemy creature does.
Also see see "Sticky Pixies" and "Curvy Carrion Crawlers", which are added restrictions on the movements of those types of creatures.
During the attack phase, it can attack any adjacent creature of the opposing team. (Note: you cannot attack creatures from the same team.)
To resolve an attack, the attacker rolls its "Attack dice" number of six-sided dice. The defender rolls its "Defense dice" number of six-sided dice. For each attack die which is strictly greater than the highest defense die, the defender loses a hit point.
If your hit points reach 0, you die. If you were a Pixie or an Ogre, then you leave behind a Pixie Corpse or Ogre Corpse respectively. If you were a Carrion Crawler segment, you leave behind nothing. If you were the Pixie King then the game is over.
Whenever a Pixie becomes adjacent to another Pixie, its movement phase is ended and the Pixies become stuck together into a single "clump". They can become unstuck onlywhen one of the dies. The clump must always move in parallel -- if one Pixie takes a step in one direction, all other Pixies in the clump must simultaneously take a step in the same direction -- and if any cannot move in that direction (because of another creature or the edge of the board) then the clump cannot move in that direction.
A given "clump" of Pixies which are stuck together only gets one movement phase and one attack phase per turn (but see "Swarm Attack"). When the clump attacks, each Pixie in the clump attempts to attack in the same direction. (Only enemy creatures are affected by attacks, so Pixies never hurt each other.)
Normally each Pixie clump only gets a single attack phase per turn. An important exception to this rule is the case that a clump has already spent its attack for this turn, and then a new Pixie joins the clump. The new Pixie's movement phase ends immediately when he joins the clump, and then he gets his attack phase (the last one he will ever get as a solitary Pixie). When he makes his attack (which must be upon a valid target: an adjacent enemy creature), the entire clump attacks, with each Pixie in the clump attacking in the same direction as the new Pixie is attacking).
A Carrion Crawler is made up of one of more segments. The segments form a chain, each connected to the next. The first segment is special and is called the Head, and each other segment is called a "tail segment".
The Head has a move of 1 (but see "Curvy Carrion Crawlers"). Each tail segment must move into the hex vacated by the segment in front of it. All segments move simultaneously.
The Head can attack, tail segments cannot attack. The Head can attack any adjacent enemy creature, just like any creature can, and it has a number of attack dice equal to the number of segments in the whole Carrion Crawler, counting the Head itself, but no more than 3.
Each segment, including the head, has 1 hit point and a defense dice number of 1. Each attack on a Carrion Crawler must be directed at exactly one segment, and if the attack succeeds in reducing that segment's hit points to 0 then that segment is destroyed. (Carrion Crawler segments do not leave behind corpses.)
If there was another segment following behind the destroyed segment, then the following segment becomes a new Head. This has the potential to create a new Carrion Crawler!
A Carrion Crawler of length 3 or more must make a 60 degree turn at each step. That is, the Head may not move into the hex which is directly "in front" of it -- on the opposite side of the Head from the first tail segment, nor may it move into either of the two hexes which adjut both the Head and the first tail segment. This implies that every 3 contiguous segments in the whole Crawler form a 60 degree angle.
A Carrion Crawler Head may remove a corpse that it is moving onto, and grow a new segment which appears in the hex that their rearmost tail segment just vacated. They can eat only one corpse per movement phase.
An Ogre may remove a tree that it is moving onto, and gain 1 hit point. Ogres can get more than 3 hit points this way.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his being a Fairie and not a Pixie, the Pixie King can resurrect dead Pixies. Turn one Pixie Corpse in an adjacent hex into a new live Pixie. The Pixie King can do this only at the end of the Pixie Player's turn and he cannot do it if he moved during the turn. The newly created Pixie does not get a movement nor an attack phase this turn.