DVONN VS OPERATION

DVONN is a two-player strategy board game in which the objective is to accumulate pieces in stacks. It was released in 2001 by Kris Burm as the fourth game of the GIPF Project. DVONN won the 2002 International Gamers Award and the Games magazine Game of the Year Award in 2003. DVONN is played on a board with 49 spaces. The board has a hexagonal layout 5 hexes wide. One player has 23 black pieces to play, the other player has 23 white pieces. There are also 3 neutral red pieces, called DVONN pieces. The object of the game is to control more pieces than your opponent at the end of the game. The game starts with an empty board and proceeds in two phases. During the first phase, the players place their pieces on the board, starting with the three red DVONN pieces. Pieces can be placed on any unoccupied space. White starts, and the players alternate. So Black is the first to place a piece of his own color. The first phase ends when all pieces are placed on the board, filling it completely. The second phase involves the building of stacks of pieces (a single piece is also considered a stack) by moving stacks onto other stacks. A stack is controlled by a player if his color is on top. A stack is immobile if it is surrounded by 6 neighboring stacks. The white player has the first move in this phase. Any mobile stack of height n (with n > 0) can be moved (in a straight line) in any one of the 6 directions by exactly n spaces by the player controlling it, if it lands on another stack. Jumping over empty spaces is allowed, as long as the tower does not land on an empty space. Single DVONN pieces cannot be moved, but they can be once they are part of a stack. After each move, all stacks that are not connected via a chain of neighboring stacks to any stack containing a DVONN piece are removed from the board.

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Operation is a battery-operated game of physical skill that tests players' hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. The game's prototype was invented in 1964 by John Spinello, a University of Illinois industrial design student at the time, who sold his rights to the game to renowned toy designer Marvin Glass for a sum of US$500 and the promise of a job upon graduation (a promise that was not upheld). Initially produced by Milton Bradley in 1965, Operation is currently made by Hasbro, with an estimated franchise worth of US$40 million. The game is a variant on the old-fashioned electrified wire loop game popular at funfairs. It consists of an "operating table", lithographed with a comic likeness of a patient (nicknamed "Cavity Sam") with a large red lightbulb for his nose. This could be a reference to classic cartoons, where ill characters' noses turn red. In the surface are a number of openings, which reveal cavities filled with fictional and humorously named ailments made of plastic. The general gameplay requires players to remove these plastic ailments with a pair of tweezers without touching the edge of the cavity opening. Operation includes two sets of cards: The Specialist cards are dealt out evenly amongst the players at the beginning of the game. In the U.S and Australian version, players take turns picking Doctor cards, which offer a cash payment for removing each particular ailment, using a pair of tweezers (dubbed “Electro Probe” in earlier versions) connected with wire to the board. Successfully removing the ailment is rewarded according to the dollar amount shown on the card. However, if the tweezers touch the metal edge of the opening during the attempt (thereby closing a circuit), a buzzer sounds, Sam's nose lights up red, and the player loses the turn. The player holding the Specialist card for that piece then has a try, getting double the fee if he or she succeeds. Since there will be times when the player drawing a certain Doctor card also holds the matching Specialist card, that player can purposely botch the first attempt in order to attempt a second try for double value. The winner is the player who holds the most money after all the ailments are extracted. Subsequent later games removed the money and cards, and the winner of these editions is the player who removes the most ailments.

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