How about a friendly game of Mornington Crescent?
polycounter lvl 19
I'm not British, but hopefully you'll let a friendly Canadian play.
I'm going to have the start this game off easy as to get the ball rolling nicely. The rules of Cunning 1876 are in effect for this one, just for some added flavour.
My move, and its easy: Tottenham Court Road
I'm going to have the start this game off easy as to get the ball rolling nicely. The rules of Cunning 1876 are in effect for this one, just for some added flavour.
My move, and its easy: Tottenham Court Road
Replies
however i will humour you.
take a left down tottenham street mate?
But, since we're on Frith Street it does mean I can play the Baird rule, leaving us at White City.
So, White City it is.
However, with the rules of Cunning 1876 in play and the first quarter nearly over I've no choice but to take this to the one place it never should have gone to...
Didcot Parkway
YOUR MOVE.
It's also very tricky... I think the only legal moves from didcot at this stage under the expanded rules are the Heathrow Terminals and Paddington. Bah, I'll take...
Paddington.
/edit, I just realised I could have gone further afield under those rules to Bristol or even Swansea, but that would just be mean, and the next move would likely be back to Paddington anyway.
So, since we're so close to the water, I'm moving on to Putney Bridge.
Don't forget Heathrow is still uncapped.
However, I should point out that Heathrow is capped int he expanded rules due to the introduction of Railink manuvers in that edition - which caps Heathrow via Derby.
Putney Bridge is a complete swine though - but can be Mornington Crescent in 3 moves if you know what you're doing.
That said, I'm Canadian so Putney Bridge puts me in quite the predicament, and allows Mansir the reverse shunt if he so dares to do so.
With that, I've no choice but to move along to Deans Gate, hopefully putting the person after me in a vicious loop.
mwuahahaa!
Still, you moved to Deans Gate, which puts you in the clear of a spoon...
How to avoid the vicious loop? Why I can simply move to Knightsbridge by a tilted horseshoe move past Hyde-Park Corner.
So that leaves us at Knightsbridge, and a long way from Mornington Crescent my friend.
Kudos to you for playing the horseshoe card and saving my ass.
I'll need to think about this, unless someone else comes up with a safe move first.
therefor i say Green Park
Anyway, that does leave it open for a quick play of Gardener's No Oak Passage, taking us directly to Royal Oak, but ruling out Burnt Oak or Oakwood for the next move.
Royal Oak (no oak passage) then.
As the old saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in Shepherd's Bush.
Having said that, I rolled the dice, tallied the numbers, and it appears I'm going to have to progress down the Southwark's folly.
So Southwark it is, then.
Thankfully, Southwark shares a name with an older disused station, so I shall invoke the historical Borough Ward of Bridge Without rule of 1914 and move onto...
Monument
Anyhow if you're going to start playing like that then I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it, as it were.
Unfortunately I feel I may be falling into a trap as surely you couldn't have mistakenly walked into a situation where the Fellow's Mirror (with duplicity allowance of course) could be played successfully?
Look very carefully at your moves and you will see I have an abundance of moves available. Out of charity I will refrain from the most crushing of them and simply move the game to Moor Park.
I'll just pop over to Elephant and Castle by using Davidson's olde Gown.
By the way, use of anything more than a D6 is frowned upon in the UK, and even they are only allowed following Templeton's Rules. Since this is an international game though I think we'll let it slide
Many would regard that as cheating, much in the way that a bishops gambit is without first completing a successful "en exile" (or claiming that you had).
Davidsons olde Gown? I always thought it was Davidsons OWN gown. In interesting move nonetheless, since normally the Freemasons Arms is involved with E&C (or an Aunt Minne).
Right, Dollis Hill you bloody merkin. Dollis bloody Hill. That'll remove the Jubilee line until a wiggan.
As a new-late-comer I shall provoke Westminster, with a double-standard facing the North. Either one of you is going to be dispossessed, so you better think carefully about your next move.
Westminster to Whitechapel on a twisted acre, freeing Jubilee but locking District, and giving me an additional move (Regis addendum, 1943). From there I shall perform the Brunel exchange, leaving me at Canada Water and immune from Knurding or Spoon, with global return to Whitechapel blocked. Rock on!
So, Canada Water, no Whitechapel Return and District is blocked from play.
Your move.
I henceforth hold my double-standart, now facing the west, and persist towards Baker Street with cross mid-section intervals over H, M and C. I can already smell the bakery outside Crescent.
So, my move was legal, and your move, while also legal would instead leave you at Bank, with the Double Standard facing East. Physically closer to Mornington, but strategically a lot further away.
I shall hold off taking a turn now, to allow a third party to make a decision on who was correct in this matter.
I say we're at bank, you say we're at Baker Street.
I'd like to proceed without further ado (and hopefully without resorting to a Twisted Acre like you so vainly tried!) to Leytonstone, using the Central Channel Cross, cleanly closing the Chigwell Circuit.
We're not playing with Wilds by any chance?
There aren't many moves that don't leave a 4 tier run open to White City (and the GHL I've already used - stupid, stupid. I should have kept that until Edgeware or Baker Street).
Since Harl declared immunity to Spoon incorrectly, and with no wilds, I'm left with little choice. I'm going to pop in a double "commuti il ciclo" passing to Lambeth North. E&C is only a furlong away, but has already been peached (and still no wiggan)
I suppose then, I have little choice but to use Rushton's Gambit, which leaves me in Knightsbridge, a fair ways away from the Crescent. I certainly have gotten into a pickle here, hm?
Perhaps one could set this right by playing a double-Knid, followed by a prig to get back to Aldwych. It's dangerous, but strategically, it could be very beneficial.
Nothing can stop me now.. except......
I'll claim a yellow token from your triple, forfeiting Camden Town but consolidating Finchley.
With a swift shunt to Farringdon, I can leave Zone 4 in spoon (until wiggan), and furthermore I make the East playable.
So, Zone 4 is in spoon? Not a problem. A quick Albert's Rhombus play will leave us rather neatly at Barbican.
wrong you are and wrong you shall be, so long as you continue to insult me with such ricidulous rules and regulations! you abviously have no idea what you're talking about, you're one of those silly pretenders-players hobos ain'tcha???
get off my court.
It's Mornington Crescent on the loop, biatch.
With Spoon invoked you can't call MC, so you get a shunt to Euston, and thus in doing so has opened the 4th lateral. Thus, according to Davies and Hynde, I call Mornington Crescent.
New Game?
Most deceitfully, you have deployed the Yorshire Spoon counter clock-wise. I should have kept my eyes open eh??
Well played, Master Rick.
New game!
Henderson's second variation rules, no wilds, no tokens.
Angel.
Say, it's really quite simple. As an example, let's say you are in Knightsbridge, and you needed to get to Aldwych (a terribly dangerous move, albeit), you could easily play Rushton's Gambit to put Knightsbridge in spoon, while entering a prig, as well. Now, that could be complicated depending on the rule set, but I'll assume that we're playing the Extended Edition.
You could also make a knit and a prig to get to Paddington, up to Marylebone, and arrive at Aldwych from there, but I'm sure you already knew that.
The game's just that simple, really. Keep watching and I'm sure you'll catch on.
Mornington Crescent is a bit like Chess, takes 5 minutes to get the basics, but a liftime to master. It also has a great deal in common with Law, as you'll discover in a minute. Sadly, it is also somewhat fluid, as it's based on the London Underground - and all the stations therein, which of couse change every few years. Generally, unless stated otherwise, the current Underground is played, although Classics tournaments allow you to play on an older version of the system. I believe there's a Time Travelling varient popular in some colleges that allows you to alter which version of th eunderground you're playing on as the game progresses. That's usually played by physics and maths majors though, as keeping everything in your head can get very difficult.
The aim of the game is to land on Mornington Crescent station, from whichever station the game begins at.
The first rule of Mornington Crescent is thus: From a given station, the current player can move up to two stations up the line the station is on, unless such move would land them directly on Mornington Crescent.
Unlike most games where each player has an avatar, MC has only one, controlled by every player - whoever makes the final move to MC wins the game. This makes it very interesting as everyone is trying to strategialy set it up so that MC can be landed on during their go, but not anyone elses. Further complicating things in online games (such as this one) is that people can join or leave the game at any time, and there is no set order to who goes when (in formal games the turns are taken clockwise with a set number of players).
So, how does one land on MC if the first rule disallows you doing so? Well, that's where the rules come in, and the association to law. Each station has a number of rules or modifiers that can be applied to it, and a number of states it can be in, which allow different, non linear stations to be travelled to. These modifiers alter as the game progresses. For example, Blackfriars cannot be moved to directly from Kensal Rise if St. Pauls has been previously played, and North Acton has been placed in Spoon. Equally, to place North Acton in spoon one needs to visit Stanmore from Old Street while it is a prig, and Gospel Oak has been in Knurd for two rounds.
These modifiers take a while to pick up, being different for each station, and for each state the player or station may currently be in.
The law thing comes in because just as lawyers often refer to past rulings, you'll find MC players refering to previous world or national championship games (usually by the chairman or adjudicators name, and the year the game was played), where additional rules were introduced. This is possible because the chairman of the game can introduce new rules at any time - and since they do not partake in any actual games themselves (usually they are retired MC pro players) these new modifiers are of no strategic value to them personally, and are then included in the greater ruleset followed by all players (only during higher level matches of course - a small college championship's rule modifications would only be valid for future games within that championship). Adjudicators decide on whether these new rules are acceptable, and also ensure that the players are all following the same ruleset (they can vary greatly from place to place) - We don't have an adjudicator, so we're playing in good faith, and trusting that everyone else is playing by legal rules (and cross checking it with our various global rulebooks, because we're not *that tusting)
Given that we're in an informal online setting we have no chairman, and so new rules cannot be added to the main body of the MC ruleset during our game.
So, while it is time consuming to pick up these rules, the rules themselves are rarely difficult to understand (you could track down a rulebook, but they are usually limited run printings, and hard to find in North America). Most players these days pick them up as they go along, from more experienced players (or those who possess a rulebook).
Certain Master players get rules or certain sequences of names named after them, such as Rushton's Gambit - named for the late, and very great William Rushton, considered by many to be the greatest MC player of the 20th ceuntury.
I hope that helps. Feel free to join in with the game based on rule 1. You can't win that way (not knowing how to land on MC), but it will give you a chance to pick up all the other rules, regulations and modifiers as you go.
BTW - the extended edition is just that, it extends the list of possible places to go (with the right modifiers) to all the railway stations in the UK - but these can be travelled on only through modifiers, not through rule 1. It also adds some modifiers and states to the standard stations. The Chunnel edition also allows travel to the rest of Europe and interconnected railways, and the BA revision allows the use of airports connected to train stations, basically giving global coverage, but only hardcore Master MC players would ever try to take that on.