The cooperative side is black. The computer or another human opponent plays white. Black has a King, Rook, Bishop, and two Knights. White has a Queen, Rook, and Bishop. The pieces can be placed anywhere in the first two ranks, so long as a black piece and white piece do not face one another along the same file.
Victory condition for black is to capture the Queen. Victory condition for white is checkmating the King.
When it comes time for black to move, there must be at least two players representing black, and all players for black have to agree on the best move, no one can arbitrarily make a move without the team's approval. This is how more than one player cooperate to achieve the victory condition.
In playing this game, Balder and I quickly discovered how white had too much of an advantage. The game was out of balance, black was put on the defensive and never ceased to be hunted. I told Balder the name for the game should be Be Hunted because there was no Hunt except for our opponent. All white needed to do was put our King in check repeatedly while arranging forks to eliminate our pieces. No Fun!!
So at the last minute, Balder came up with a different idea.
White has a King, Rook, Bishop, Knight, and Queen. They can be positioned anywhere in the first two rows. Movement is the same as always, except in this case, the King cannot move. Also white cannot move beyond the fourth row.
Black begins with only pawns, which can be positioned anywhere in the first two rows. They can move all the way to the other side of the board, and they can move in any direction except backward (side to side and forward). Balder didn't clarify the movement capability of the pawns, I quickly realised that if he had the pawns moving in the normal way it wouldn't work. It would make the victory condition for black too difficult to achieve. The pawns would have to be able to move to the side to be a credible threat. So in this respect my version differs a little from his.
Victory condition for white is to eliminate all of the pawns before they can reach their victory condition. Victory condition for black is any pawn occupying a space next to the King.
Balder added another aspect which, in retrospect. I disagree with. He wanted black to be able to get back all of it's pawns after white has eliminated them, for a second wave of attack, plus being able to add a Knight, then, after all of these pieces are eliminated they can replenish yet again for another wave, plus a Bishop, and if eliminated, can produce yet another wave + Rook, then, finally, another wave, + Queen. I feel this throws the game out of balance. It means the victory condition for white is to eliminate successive waves of pawns plus any other pieces (which I assume have all the same moves as usual). I assume that after the final wave of pawns + Queen is eliminated, then white will have won the game. I think this throws the game out of balance, making it too difficult for white to win. Of course, I wasn't clear if the pawns could capture white's pieces or not. If they couldn't, that might put the game in balance again (or possibly throw it out of balance in favor of the white side), but I still don't like the successive waves all that much. Balder did clarify that players for white could choose how many waves of enemy attack would be allowed, thereby adjusting the game difficulty.
In any case, we didn't have time to work out the bugs, or play the game to see how well it worked. But it was a lot more intriguing, and imaginative than our first idea. The cooperative aspect of the second idea entailed giving each of two players (for white), control of two pieces, and they would take turns moving. I wasn't clear if that meant white had two moves to black's one, or not. Again, we didn't have time to really work that through.
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