ULTIMATE TACTIC

Our fine American football team here in Boston, the Patriots, has a fine coach who is a specialist in not tipping his hand about strategy when he's talking to the press. The reporter will say something like, "Bill, how are you going to get around the Bronco's defense?" and he will respond, "Well, Joe, the thing that's going to win this game ultimately is putting points on the board, so that's what we're going to try to do."

that man is a genius

Hey, brilliant tactic! I think it may even beat my own, previously top-secret tactic, of "not letting the other side score as many points as me".

You see, while seeming to be ontologcally identical, my own tactic has the problem that, followed to its logical conclusion, I would never attack with trolls.

Your tactic is better, since it emphasises the iportance of the "attack fast and hard" tactic of trolls.

However, I fear that neither tactic will work for me as my opponents always have this sneaky tendency of scoring points when I don't want them to

[quote="Dewi Morgan"]However, I fear that neither tactic will work for me as my opponents always have this sneaky tendency of scoring points when I don't want them to :([/quote]

thats not very nice. i hope you gave them a good ticking off.

If all alse fails:

I know this thread is meant to be silly and fun but I have a confession to make. It seems appropriate to make this confession in a thread entitled ULTIMATE TACTIC.

The other day whilst recovering from a root canal, (assured by my dentist that I am a mutant; because the biggest premolars he'd ever seen before were 22mm long and mine were 31 - which let me tell you doesn't make for a fun root canal!!); Doped up to the eyeballs on painkillers I had a flash of brilliance on troll tactics and wanted to try it out. (Perhaps I was wrong after all in my drug addled state). So I went to online thud to see if there was anyone there that I could try my fiendish plan of attack against.

Enter SANEAlex. In all the online and slowfire games I've played against SA, He's ALWAYS won playing dwarfs, he is after all very strong in this regard. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that my fiendish troll tactic actually WORKED. So for the first time EVER, I managed to score points against SA playing trolls. I felt very proud of myself, I was doing the mental equivalent of that scene where John Travolta struts across the road when SA asked me. "So have you thought of a counter?"

I was dumbfounded, utterly dumbfounded, now that I had displayed my flash of brillance, how was I going to defend against it?

SANEAlex proceeded to use my troll tactic against me, refining the bl%&*$% thing even so that NOTHING worked against it. It was utterly humiliating that as the creator of this Flash of Brilliance (TM) I was unable to counter my own invention. He wiped the board with me, comments along the lines of "This is just too brutal!" abounded. Only the constant wheedling from my impossibly cute five year old "Daddy is it my turn to play on the computer YET!" enabled me to beg off completing the game against SA and losing every dwarf on the board without touching his trolls.

I hereby formally apologize to anyone that has run afoul of my trademark Frankenstein (Oh my god I created a monster) Troll opening gambit. Don't ask me to counter it - I don't know how. To be summarily whipped by Trolls see SANEAlex - he improved the damn thing and made it an unstoppable monster.

If anyone does figure out how to counter the thing - LET ME KNOW.

Windle

sorry WP but i might have stolen that plan also it is rather good.

one way of countering it (theoretically of course) is to shift your darwfs perpendicular to the attack as this tends to be a weak spot. still not brilliant but hey

Any chance of a [i]description[/i] of the Frankenstein?

ah!...that would be telling...

Or perhaps better still, the database number of the original game... we could all study it and marvel at your magnificence, then hiss and boo at SA's plagarism

Mr Scrub

yes lets boo him and maybe he will be so dis-heartned i might actually win against him! nah...

Is there really such an all-powerful tactic (he says, trying to goad SA into telling him), as I feel the game was so well created that the balance was made so equal that no such tactic exists.
Please give us the outline so a counter might be suggested....
<stops talking as snake-like tounge manages to tangle itself in its own length and trickery>

The tactic is *pretty* enough, but it's flawed in that it's the product of a troll-style mind. That is to say, it focuses on threatening dwarfs and intimidating your opponent into playing into your hands.

I watched SANEAlex using it this evening, and it was very pretty. At first, I fell for it, but as soon as I looked at it in Thudboard, it was easy enough to take the teeth out of it.

The trick to playing dwarfs (against any troll opening) is always to force your opponent to fight on your terms. If you cave in to this kind of intimidation, of course you'll get creamed. The trick is to walk the fine line between standing your ground and just avoiding a fight.

Now, I'm not so vain as to claim to have cracked the ultimate tactic. My dwarf game still isn't good enough to turn it around for me, but it's not hard to turn the tables on your opponent if he uses this approach. Sorry WP.

Dearmer,

If you have actually found a counter then YOU ARE MY HERO

I spent some time yesterday on Thudboard moving the pieces around and maybe because I was playing both sides of the game couldn't find a dwarf counter. (or at least one that resulted in a points win for the dwarf side)

This was the thrust of my original drug fueled flash of brillance.

Right so trolls ain't fast right? We slow unless we get shoved towards a dwarf we can smash. So how we get faster, instead of trying to smash as many dwarfs as possible right we should smash only a couple but be in tha right um...er...tac-tical pos-it-ion to crush any of tha lawn ornaments from getting ..many... er... lots of dwarfs. Coz lots a dwarfs is bad for us trolls. So we apply ...stra-te-gic pre-ssure to force them dwarfs to come to us by getting trolls in all areas of tha board. Den dey can't make fings hard for us. Good tinking innit?, and wifout the pork future warehouse neither.

So I'm typing this from work during my lunch break so I can't give thudboard reference points. I'll stumble through and hope you can get the gist anyway. Sorry to anyone who wanted to keep this tactic to themselves for the Tournament (I'm looking at you Ponder), but it seems fair to let everyone know so they can try and think of counters.

An standard dwarf opening is moving one of the dwarf left or right to create a line of three.

DD_DD to D_DDD

The standard trolls response has been to then create an attacking line that vertically intersects this.

TTT to TTT
TST TST
TTT T_T
T

But then with a good dwarf sacrifice it is still possible to make it hard for the trolls to effectively smash the block. you get enough dwarfs pointing to this line, even if it is a line of three dwarfs with nothing else to support it, your are going to either lose a troll or have to attack from a different position. Instead if you move the troll to attack on the diagonal like this...

TTT to TTT
TST TST
TTT TT_
T

Your next move puts the troll within striking distance of the embryonic block. So at this stage the trolls are already applying pressure to the dwarf player.

So what can the dwarf do? Do they abandon the embryonic block from a single troll move and essentially give up that part of the board? Or do they try and bolster that side knowing that at most they will be able to get one dwarf in position before the troll smacks into the side and is only two places from squishing the block.

Deamer is very right. The troll tactic is designed to force the dwarves into being reactive rather than proactive. I really only get to play THUD on the weekends, so don't have SANEAlex's depth of experience, he was able to take my idea and expand on it in nasty ways, when I tried to counterattack with my dwarfs a simple troll move like this..

TTT to TTT
TST TST
_T_ _T_
T_T TT_

meant that his trolls were still close enough to squash my embryonic block and I was badly out of position. And it would have worked from either direction as well! Then trying to build in a second position meant that you almost ~have~ to select the opposite side of the board (because the three trolls in diagonal formation are long enough to cover two directions at once). A simple repeat of the original move on the opposite side of the board, means things get difficult very quickly for the dwarfs.

Yes the dwarfs can counterattack, but it seems inevitable that you lose more than 4 dwarfs per troll you take out. If Dearmer can point to a game in which he won with dwarfs on a points basis for this tactic I would love to see it.

WP

Edit: After looking at my message, the positioning of the DDTT diagrams is all wrong. Sorry guys but I don't know/have time to fix this. Hopefully it is not too confusing

I will have a go:

T=troll S=stone x = nowt there son

[code:1]
TTT TTT TTT
TST ---->TST ----->TST
TTT xTx xxx
TxT TTT
[/code:1]

Then the attacks vary from here on depending on how the dwarf side is shaping up

hope this clears it up a bit.

how about a counters such as

[code:1]
TTT
TST
xxx
TTT
DDDDD
[/code:1]

all the ds are possibilities (not all at the same time-thats just rediculous ) the move you decide will obviously depend on how your dwarf block is lining up[/code]

[quote="Dewi Morgan"]Any chance of a [i]description[/i] of the Frankenstein?[/quote]

Well thanks due to your upgrades and the fact that Oograh is a good detective and found that it was game 2568.

it can be found here:-

http://www.thudgame.com/getgame/?id=2568&half=1&move=1

Dearmers well thought out reply to it unfortunately is in a bad game with more than 2 halves so cant be downloaded or viewed properly.

This isn't half an exciting time to be a thud player... Big thanks to Lee & Dewi for bringing it all together.

What a time to discover this... WP, would you mind keeping any more flashes of brilliance in strategy (excluding, of course, the dwarf counter to this) to yourself until the end of the tournament I was quite happy in my safe little world until this burst onto the scene

[quote="Dwarves are small"]Is there really such an all-powerful tactic SNIP as I feel the game was so well created that the balance was made so equal that no such tactic exists[/quote]

I fear it may be all-powerful, but only for now - in the same way that it took a "drug-fuelled flash of brilliance" (TM & (C) Windle Poons 2006) for WP to come up with the tactic, it'll require some equally extraordinary work to get round it... I have one or two ideas (which I'm not revealing yet ), but I imagine their flaws will be revealed once I come up agaist a real oponent.

If anyone else, like myself, has fantasies of thud immortality for devising the counter to what may yet become known as Poons' Offensive, they'll face rather a dillemma, I fear: Do you tell the world your ideas now, and stop anyone else from working it out independently then stealing your thunder, or do you keep it under wraps in order to aid your progression in the tournament?

Answers onna postcard to the usual address

Mr Scrub

The trouble is that the 'Frankenstein' only works when the dwarfs try to form a baseline on their first move. If, instead, you move a dwarf into a position like this: [code:1] DxDxxxD
DDxDD[/code:1]
and your opponent tries to menace you by moving so:
[code:1] TTT
TST
xTT
T[/code:1]
he may think he's being clever, because he's threatening your dwarf here at the @:
[code:1] @xxxxxxxD
DxDxxxD
DDxDD[/code:1]
and also the one at the other end of his diagonal line of trolls. The first time SANEAlex tried this against me, I tried to react by protecting the square he wanted to move into by 'forming the baseline':
[code:1] @xxxxxxxxD
DxDxxxD
DDDxD[/code:1]
but he countered with[code:1] TTT
TST
xTx
TxT[/code:1]
and trying to block his new diagonal, I moved thus:
[code:1] @xxxxxxxxD
DxDxDxD
DDDxx[/code:1]
but then he moved his middle troll forward, and chaos ensued. Then I realized that the fault in my game was in my second move, which could have been more effective, if I'd only moved the threatened dwarf, creating both an attack and retreat at the same time!
[code:1] xxxDxxxxD
DxDxxxD
DDxDD[/code:1]
Now the first troll he moved is in trouble. He can't shove it like he meant to (not without losing it), and if he doesn't move it, he'll lose it. I don't think I actually 'resisted' the Frankenstein as much as prevented him from using it. Instead he moved the troll out of danger:
[code:1] TTT
TST
xTT
T[/code:1]
and we continued with a lovely, less stressful game. I don't remember exactly what we did next, but I know we both made some bonehead plays at one point or another, but it's safe to say that the crisis was averted, proving that the best way to beat the Frankenstein is not to let it off the table.
That being said, my guess is that SANEAlex is refining the attack as we speak, to work around the weakness.

Me and dearmer have just been experimenting with this tactic and the evidence so far suggests that it is un-beatable. if this is the case then it will mkae for some very boring games indeed. although right at the end the trolls where getting spaced out a little and maybe after a few more moevs a small block could have been formed... that alas did not happen as dearmer had to scarper.

We should start a new thread: the science of thud, to work out such puzzles and problems. its like quantum, only with thud pieces instead of atoms and things.

[quote]Me and dearmer have just been experimenting with this tactic and the evidence so far suggests that it is un-beatable. if this is the case then it will mkae for some very boring games indeed.[/quote]
I wouldn't quite say that. What fascinates me about the game is that the board really does belong to the dwarfs. Trolls have a limited few options for moves (even fewer if they've committed to this kind of attack) but dwarfs have virtually limitless ones.

You came up with a crafty little work-around for my crack, but others will come up with ways around that. Even I started to, when I started the approach of moving over to another side of the board to start building.

I certainly won't say that the game is getting boring at all. Instead of piddly little tentative opening moves, within moments of a game starting, thorny problems start to crop up. The battle is a pitched one almost from the word 'go.' I'm liking it...

i only meant it would be boring if the trolls always woere going to win and there was nothing to do to stop them!

then when someone finally does beat them they can say "i would have got away with it if it wasn't for those meddlin' dwarfs"

As stated in my original post I do apologize for thrusting this upon the Thud Community. If it is any consolation I've always thought my Troll game was better than my dwarf game, just imagine now how terrible my dwarf game is when I face my own monster. I think I shot myself in the foot.

@SCRUB All future flashes of brillance (TM) will be lined up against the wall and shot before they have the potential to get out of hand. (at least until the Tournament is over). I've discovered that once you let something like this out of the bag, it is hard to put it back in.

@Dearmer - So your counter to this game...any chance we could see it in action?

@Dearmer II - Your comments are entirely correct, This only works with the standard Dwarf opening. But there is a reason why that move is the standard dwarf opening. The establishment of a baseline to build the block upon is vitally important to the dwarfs beings able to attack the trolls (rather than the other way around). The move ~almost~ forces dwarfs to play a defensive rather than offensive game, at least in the beginning anyways. There may be a way to counter with the appropriate dwarf sacrifice at one crucial move, but from a "first ten moves in the game" perspective I can't seem to find it.

@OB & SANEAlex - Thanks for finding the original game, no doubt much beer has been consumed on both sides of the world to try and come up with an appropriate counter. I'll raise a bottle to your good health tonight and squeeze my brain to try and come up with some answers.

Maybe I need another root canal to come up with a counter

WP

[quote]Your comments are entirely correct, This only works with the standard Dwarf opening. But there is a reason why that move is the standard dwarf opening. The establishment of a baseline to build the block upon is vitally important to the dwarfs beings able to attack the trolls (rather than the other way around). The move ~almost~ forces dwarfs to play a defensive rather than offensive game, at least in the beginning anyways. There may be a way to counter with the appropriate dwarf sacrifice at one crucial move, but from a "first ten moves in the game" perspective I can't seem to find it. [/quote]

I get that about forming the baseline, and I believe in it. [b]But[/b] I don't think it needs to be the very first move a dwarf player makes. By all means, include it in your setup, but I think that putting something in the [b]second[/b] row to start out can be a stiffer defense. I don't necessarily want to attack the trolls right in the first few moves, anyway. A decent player is too smart for that; far better to [b]lure[/b] one troll down with the prospect of breaking up a nascent block, then trapping him.

Maybe someone can make a suggestion. If I were to take on a few challengers, not for the purposes of playing an actual game, but in order to demonstrate the weakness of this particular tactic (and that it can, in fact, be countered) is it best done in this forum, or in 'Forum Thud'?

[quote="Dearmer"]If I were to take on a few challengers, not for the purposes of playing an actual game, but in order to demonstrate the weakness of this particular tactic (and that it can, in fact, be countered) is it best done in this forum, or in 'Forum Thud'?[/quote]
I'd love to see it, and since it are games, be it demonstration games, I'd like to see them in Forum Thud.

I think that my reliance on the abilities of Terry et al. as the game's creators has been justified as I think that this troll tactic is not invincible, even if the dwarf player decides to open with the classic back row move. I have played a game out thus acting as both trolls and dwarves. I fI have missed moves that would have enhanced the troll player's postion then please reply...
1. d J15 - H15
T G9 - G10
2. d L14 - G14
T J9 - J10
3. d M13 - G13
T G10 - H11
4. d K15 - K11
T J10 - J11 x K11
5. d G13 - F14
T J11 - H12
6. d A9 - E13
T H12 - H13 x G14
7. d H15 - G14
T H13 - H12
8. d F1 - F13
T H12 - G13 x F13 x F14 x G14
9. d E13 - G13 x G13
T H11 - G12 x G13
.....
.....
.....
This leaves the dwarf with an advantage as most players would accept losing 5 dwarfs for a troll at such an early stage of the game. The dwarves are now free to run off to a different part of the board with (effectively) equality in terms of points and an advantage in terms of positioning (as the trolls do not have the numbers in the centre of the board to carry out the original tactic.
I hope for the sake of dwarf players everywhere that this is possible, and feel free to poke holes in this game-theory-thing!

"Yo" to all!

I don't know if this makes a great difference, but I feel it might assist the trolls if their 4th move, rather than removing the two potential shove lines of J10/H11 and G8/H9/J10, they use the troll at J8 to remove the threatening dwarf on K11:
T J8 - L10 x K11

Mr Scrub

I think I found a very similar theoretical game, but with different starting moves for both trolls and dwarfs. Ultimately, though, it comes to the same point where an advancing troll is faced with the option to either retreat or go kamikaze for the sake of breaking up the block.

I've started a challenge over 'Forum Thud,' but I may adapt bits of this to suit my evil schemes... thanks for the good work!

That's a completely fair point and it was very stupid of me to miss that way of attacking that dwarf as it was my intention to place the dwarf in such a way htta one of those two trolls had to move to attack him.
As I was writing this post I did not think that it mattered too much as there must be another way toattack thos trolls but One alludes me at this point. Therefore if that attacking line cannot be disturbed, for the fourth dwarf move, we must move a dwarf such:
4. d F1 - F13
T H11 - H12 x G13
5. d E2 - E13
T J10 - J11
6. d F13 - F14
T H12 - H13 x G14
7. d H15 - G14
T H13 - H12
8. d K15 - H13
T H12 - J13 x H13
9. d G14 - F13
T J13 - J14
10. d C12 - E12
from here I think that there is no way that trolls can destroy this block without losing one or more trolls. There are still many sites on the board where dwarves can reform and it is likely to still be in as favourable a position as suggested in my post above. Pheew! thought my plan was already broken, it survives for now as long as mr. scrub isn't posting any time soon!
Das

Dear all,

I've also tried something towards the ultimate strategy and I came up with the following moves:
1. d A9 - A8 T G7 - F7
2. d B11 - B7 T G9 - F9
Up till now nothing strange from here, but in the next move it will be different.
3. d C12 - C5
Option 1: you could directly go for the battle by T F7 - D5 x C4 x C5, but that would cost you 2 Dwarves compared with a Troll, and the block will be build in the north by d B7 - D5 x D5 and T J9 - J10 or T F9 - E8 followed by d D5 - G2.
Option 2: T F7 - E8, followed by d P6 - C6 followed by T E8 - E7 followed by d G1 - D4 which would make the block even stronger. You could try to continue with T J9 - J10 followed by d J15 - J11 and that wouldn't help the Trolls.
Option 3: T F7 - E8 followed by d P6 - C6 followed by T E8 - D8 followed by d J1 - C7 and the defence is standing its man. You could go for the battle, but in the end the block will be made in the north.

I would say, try it and see it by your selves.

Greetings

Palm

That was too complex for me to follow but the gist of it, i feel, was that this is by no means invincible, and merely an opening that requires a lot of thinking to combat. In fact I feel that through good dwarf play one can be in a fairly advantageous position after very few moves. Terry et al.'s creations remains intact!
DAS

Because I'm being dense, I don't get why the following doesn't work as a defense: (moving the threatened dwarf from C12 to the

[code:1]
. A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P.
1 # # # # # d d . d d # # # # #
2 # # # # d . . . . . d # # # #
3 # # # d . . . . . . . d # # #
4 # # d . . . . . . . . . d # #
5 # d . . . . . . . . . . . d #
6 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . d
7 d d D . . T . T T . . . . . d
8 d . . . . . T # T . . . . . .
9 . . . . . T . T T . . . . . d
10d . . . . . . . . . . . . . d
11# d . . . . . . . . . . . d #
12# # . . . . . . . . . d # #
13# # # d . . . . . . . d # # #
14# # # # d . . . . . d # # # #
15# # # # # d d . d . # # # # #
[/code:1]

(incidentally, I added a new mode, "forum" to www.thudgame.com/getgame just for this post! )

nice

[quote]Because I'm being dense, I don't get why the following doesn't work as a defense: (moving the threatened dwarf from C12 to the

[code:1]
. A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P.
1 # # # # # d d . d d # # # # #
2 # # # # d . . . . . d # # # #
3 # # # d . . . . . . . d # # #
4 # # d . . . . . . . . . d # #
5 # d . . . . . . . . . . . d #
6 d . . . . . . . . . . . . . d
7 d d D . . T . T T . . . . . d
8 d . . . . . T # T . . . . . .
9 . . . . . T . T T . . . . . d
10d . . . . . . . . . . . . . d
11# d . . . . . . . . . . . d #
12# # . . . . . . . . . d # #
13# # # d . . . . . . . d # # #
14# # # # d . . . . . d # # # #
15# # # # # d d . d . # # # # #[/code:1][/quote]

That was my original well-thought out response (that SANEAlex referred to) but I couldn't make it so pretty when I posted. Unfortunately, if the middle troll (in row 8 ) is moved out first, and then the one above him (in row 7), then the dwarf at C7 is threatened by a diagonal attack (T F8 - D6 x C7). Right?

Dear Dearmer,

How about moving Troll from F7 to E8???

Greetings

Palm

I thought that was what I did in the last page in my demo game?
[quote]1. d J15 - H15
T G9 - G10
2. d L14 - G14
T J9 - J10
3. d M13 - G13
T G10 - H11
4. d K15 - K11 [/quote]
dwarf move 3 is what you suggest ponder- i think. I think that my revised demo game shows what others have been trying to say (palm mainly) i.e. that this is a good opening but no incredible revelation...
Disagreement on the back of a postcard!

Hi All,
I never said that it wasn't unbeatable, just that after I created the thing that ~I~ couldn't beat it.

I'm glad that it is an attack that "requires a lot of thinking to combat", this is after all a forum for which we can improve our skills and challenge each other.

I'm at work now but will hopefully get a chance to check out all the unusual counters and counters of counters when I get home

I'm actually working on a dwarf counter at present which looks like some of the stuff that has been stated previously, but at this stage still leaves a two to three point advantage to trolls mid game.

Happy Thudding All.

WP