Game 105: Octi

The heart of me absolutely loves and adores games of pure strategy, but I don't often play them.  I think I'm often looking more for entertainment than for mental exercise these days, and maybe I simply like it when games include some chance elements so that I don't have to take full responsibility for falling behind or losing.  I also think that because I'm a mathematician people have expectations of me being able to absolutely crush my competition with games of pure strategy such as Chess and Go, so playing them can feel more like being in a pressure cooker than like any sort of enjoyment.  Given this sense, then if I win, it's just expected, and if I lose I've REALLY blown it!  Anyway  .  .  .  it was more than time to grab a game of pure strategy off the shelf, and so out came Octi.  David and I have played it twice in the last two days, and I sense that we haven't explored anything near its full potential yet.  The wins came quite quickly and easily, but I really do think that's because we're not yet fully aware of our options.  I'm hoping to play this quite a few more times in upcoming days, which we should be able to do - between COVID-19 pandemic lock-down, David being on spring break, and me being on sabbatical!  I hope David will hang in there with me with this game, so far he seems not exactly thrilled with it.  Though both of the first two wins were mine, I predict he'll be doing the winning as soon as he gets more into it.  He's typically better than I am at games involving territory - better at spatial visualization, intuiting the good positions, and thinking further ahead with moves.

It's an award-winning game, getting a BEST in category from Games Magazine, so there's definitely got to be more to it than we've seen in our two attempts so far.  We did buy this and play this YEARS ago, but one down-side is that (in our copy, at least) the pegs don't fit easily into the pods on the diagonal sides, and as we're trying to shove a peg in, other pegs in that pod tend to fall out, and then it's easy to forget which of the 8 holes the other pegs were in.  We might just have been unlucky and gotten a not-so-well constructed set, or maybe they're all that way.  Hopefully this issue will be alleviated through use, or maybe we can drill the holes a bit bigger (but not so big that the pegs won't stick in place!).  The pieces do have a nice feel to them though, made of solid wood.

The picture above shows the starting position (well, with David having inserted one peg into one of his pods).   The three pictures below show some positions during gaming and then the position on my first win.  I think it's a really attractive game.

I don't think we did any stacking in our first game, so here is a picture from our second.  I'm not sure I was reading the rule about stacking correctly, so I'll have to double check that.

As you might imagine, in each turn you can place a peg, or move a pod in a direction indicated by one of its pegs, or bring in a pod from reserve.  There are lots of details to be aware of such as the fact that multiple jumps can be made, and you can choose to capture or not when you jump; you can jump pods of either color; bringing pods in after capture is different from bringing them in from reserve, etc.  The goal is to occupy all three of your opponents starting "OCTI" positions.  

In terms of construction, I mentioned the trouble with the pegs earlier, but it's kind of problematic having a box that's such an unusual shape - really thin and long.  It makes the game stand out and catch your attention as being different, which is cool, but it also makes it hard to stack with the other games on the shelf.  We had it stacked in such a way that it was sticking out of the shelf, but then we rearranged the furniture, and the box got all smashed up when we moved the couch.  That's not a huge issue, but I like to take care of my things, and I'm not thrilled when something looks junky as our box looks now.  (Yes, we could have been more careful  .  .  .)

I feel like I've been too negative.  None of these issues have to do with the idea behind this game, which I think is one of the most elegant that I've ever come across.  As I say, I hope to play this a lot more in upcoming days - and perhaps even beyond that if it lives up to what I think its potential is.  I do believe that with repeated play we are going to discover some really deep strategies.  Here's hoping David will be as willing as I am to go deep with this!

PS  As I'm selecting labels for this post I see that this is our first game beginning with the letter O.  We've played 104 games so far, none of which have begun with this letter!  S seems to be the most popular letter for game names, closely followed by C.  (How can we not have played Othello yet!?)