KAMISADO VS PLATEAU

Kamisado is an abstract strategy board game for two players that's played on an 8x8 multicoloured board. Each player controls a set of eight octagonal dragon tower pieces. Each player's set of dragon towers contains a tower to match each of the colours that appear on the squares of the board (i.e., a brown tower, a green tower, etc.). One player's towers have gold dragons mounted on the top, while the other player's towers are topped with black dragons. In an interview, designer Peter Burley said that the design of Kamisado dated back to a chance observation in a men's room in the 1970s. "I noticed that the floor had an interesting pattern of small colored tiles", he said. "I mentally made a note that this could possibly be used as a basis for a board game – this is something that I do quite a lot, whenever I see something a bit different. It must have made a deep impression on this occasion, however, because that night I had a vivid dream involving this tile pattern, and somehow the notion of 'whatever colour you land on, your opponent must move a piece that matches this'. I guess my subconscious mind had been working on this and sorted it out while I was asleep." The players’ towers start the game on the row nearest to them. The players take turns moving one tower any number of spaces in a straight line, either directly forwards or diagonally forwards, but not into or through a square already containing another dragon tower. The player with the black dragons moves first and may choose any tower. From this point onwards, each player must move the dragon tower that matches the colour of the square that the opponent's last move finished on. The object of the game is to reach your opponent's Home Row with one of your dragon towers. The first player to achieve this goal is the winner of the round. Games may be played as single rounds, or as more advanced ‘Match’ formats. Matches are played up to 3 points (Standard Match), 7 points (Long Match) or 15 points (Marathon Match). During a match, each time a round is won, a special ‘Sumo Ring’ is added to the dragon tower that has fought its way through to the opponent's Home Row. The sumo rings provide the scoring system for the game, and also endow special powers to the dragon towers that carry them. These towers are known as Sumo towers and have the ability to push opponent's towers back one space, by using a move known as a ‘Sumo Push’.

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Plateau is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Jim Albea. The game was developed over a two-year period culminating in its present form on May 12, 1986. The original name for the game was Pinnacle, but it was discovered that an older board/card game had that name, so around 1989 the name was changed to Plateau. From the 1980s through the 1990s Plateau was played at Science Fiction conventions mostly in the Southeastern United States. From the 1990s to the present, the game is played live at an online game site and via email. In 1997 a computer implementation of the game was created which facilitates email play and has a computer robot. Onboarding is adding one new piece to the play. This new piece can be placed anywhere that doesn't directly harm an opposing piece. For instance, you can onboard to any blank square or on top of any of your own pieces. The majority of Plateau moves are onboards. Instead of Onboarding or Moving, a player can choose to spend his turn exchanging prisoners. Prisoners are exchanged using the point values of the pieces. A simple value-for-value system is used. Since the pieces range in value from 1 point (for the mute) to 21 points (for the Ace) there are usually several combinations and options available for the players. The player initiating the exchange selects the pieces he wishes to exchange. These pieces will all add up to some point value. The responding player then has four options depending on the point values of the prisoners that he holds.

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