TAASEN
The
Game Of Tryslmaistan Chess
By
Jennifer Diane Reitz
INTRODUCTION
Taasen,
the analogue of the earthly game of Chess within the Universe of
Tryslmaistan, has uncertain origins. According to some,
the game was invented by the third generation of the First People,
the mythical ancestors of all humans, who came to Tryslmaistan from
the Dark Realm hundreds of thousands of years ago. More sensible
individuals ascribe the game to the invention of the advanced people
who lived on the worldplate of Myrmil, and consider it the creation
of a clever Alchemist, placing the game at around 400 to 500 years
old. The Witches claim the game was given to the 13 Progenitors by
the Goddess, after she created the universe and all the Worldplates,
exactly 1313 years ago. Whatever the origin of Taasen, it is one of
the most popular games of the Worldplate of Gryrnu.
DESCRIPTION
"Taasen",
an ancient talcryl word meaning "To Conquer" or "To
Colonize", is played on a triangular board divided into 16
smaller triangular spaces.
The
corner triangles of the board are colored black, or very dark grey,
to symbolize either the "Dark Realm", the mythological
origin of the First People, or the state of ignorance that those who
would colonize a new Worldplate might have. The shape of the board
overall is the shape of the world, and in the very center, a triangle
is lacquered blue to represent the Central Sea traditionally believed
common to all Worldplates. Three triangle spaces surrounding the
Central Sea represent a fully developed forest, doubtless planted by
the new colonists, or else provided by the grace of the Goddess,
depending. The remainder of the Taasen board is tan, the color of the
crystal deserts that form the border of a Worldplate.
There
are nine playing pieces in the game of Taasen, three red, three blue
or white, and three green. Each color represents a Faction or Side in
the conflict. Traditionally they represented the three divisions of Life.
The
three color sets are further divided into three types of pieces, the
'Thaum', The 'Sciane', and the 'Paupil'. These are universally
considered to represent the three Factions of civilization, with the
Thaum clearly being the Wiccans, the Sciane being the Alchemists, and
the Paupil representing the vast unaligned mass of the common and
ignorant workers. Despite having three playing factions, Taasen is
strictly a two-player game.
SETTING
UP THE GAME
At
the beginning of a game of Taasen, all the pieces are grouped
according to color set, and each set is placed on one of the dark
corner spaces of the Taasen board. It does not matter which color
gets which corner, because the Taasen board is a regular, symmetrical
triangle. One player takes the Red Faction, and one player takes the
Green Faction. The White Faction is considered neutral, and can be
manipulated equally by both players.
This
represents the only time during the game that more than one piece
can occupy a space on the board. Once two pieces have left the dark
corner space, only a single piece may ever occupy it again during the game.
Traditionally
the Red Faction player moves first, representing the mobility of
Red, or Meat, Life. Each turn a player may move one piece one space
upon the board. The player may either choose to move one piece of
their own color, or alternatively, choose to move one piece belonging
to the White Faction. In any case, a player may
only move one piece per turn.
The standard movement rules for pieces are:
A
piece may move one space in any legal direction upon the board.
A
legal move is one that crosses the straight
bordering side
of one triangle to another, bordering, triangle.
It
is illegal to move across touching triangle points.
A
piece may not move into a space occupied by another piece.
All
pieces are affected by one unique space upon the board. The blue
central triangle is that space, and it is conceptually considered to
be the 'Sea'. In gameplay terms, the blue 'sea' space is not a true
space, but rather a form of quick movement:
Any
piece moving into the blue central space may not remain upon that
space, but must immediately move across it to another empty space bordering
the blue 'sea'.
If no empty space is available to cross over to, then the blue
central 'sea' may not be crossed.
This
is the only exception to the single move rule, the ability to
"Cross The Ocean" becoming a double move.
RULES
OF ENGAGEMENT
Pieces
do not 'Capture' or 'Take' other pieces in the usual manner for
chess-like games. Instead, playing pieces may 'Push' other pieces. A
player is not allowed to Push pieces of their own Faction color, but
may Push the opposing color, or White Faction pieces.
Whenever
an attacking piece, of whatever color, is moved into a space
adjoining another, defending piece, that defending piece is
considered 'Pressed' and MUST be IMMEDIATELY moved to any open space
bordering it's location. The choice of that open space is made by the
defending player. This is how a piece may 'push' another piece across
the Taasen board.
A
piece may Push another, opposing piece, by moving into an adjoining
space. The pushed piece must move to any legal, open space to escape.
If no legal move is possible, the pushed piece is removed from play.
However,
if there is no possible open space for the defending piece to run
to, it is considered to be 'Crushed', or 'Taken'. The taken piece is
removed from the board, and may not return to play, it is effecively 'dead'.
In
the above illustration, we see an initial setup where a Red Paupil
occupies the lower left Dark Space, red and green Sciane pieces are
located to the right of the Paupil, and by the blue 'sea' space, sits
a lone green Thaum.
The
Thaum is moved into the space adjacent to the red Sciane, 'Pressing'
the red Sciane. The Red Sciane, having no possible escaping move, is
'Crushed', and thus is 'taken' and removed from play.
Only
ONE piece may be Pushed, or Crushed, in any given move, any given
turn. Chain reactions, where a pushed piece might push another in
sequence are not allowed. One player, one move, one possible
Push or Crush. Then it is on to the next player's turn, and so forth.
This
is the basic method of attack in Taasen, but this basic system is
complicated further by the nature of the individual pieces themselves...
THAUM,
SCIANE, PAUPIL
The
three types of pieces cannot indescrimately Push each other. Each
type may only Push one other, specific type, around, and no other.
Thus, two opposing pieces of the same type cannot Push each other at
all, and may, as we saw above, sit side by side -effectively blocking
each other.
The
rules for which pieces may Push other pieces form an Oroborous
Conflict, a system common to games such as Janken
"Jan-Ken-Pon", otherwise known as Rock-Paper-Scizzors.
Simply
put, the rules for a Pushing Attack are as follows:
The
Thaum Pushes the Sciane
The
Sciane Pushes the Paupil
The
Paupil Pushes the Thaum
Thus,
to state the hopefully obvious, a Sciane cannot Push another Sciane,
or a Thaum, as an example, but may only Push the Paupil.
VICTORY
CONDITIONS
As
with all chess-like games, the goal is one of total domination of
the board, and thus play. This can be accomplished simply within the
game of Taasen;
A
player wins if the opposing player has no pieces of their own color
(non-White) left.
A
player wins if the opposing player cannot
make any legal move at all.
White
can never win, but can be used to create a draw, or tie game.
White
can never win, because it is a neutral Faction, manipulated equally
by both actual players.
A
game is considered over if no attack, by any faction, is possible.
In this event, the player Faction with the most pieces wins. Some
believe this circumstance can never happen.
If
all factions have the same type and number of pieces and
neither player can make a legal move, and attacking is thus
impossible, then this unlikely circumstance results
in a draw. This
too is not known for certain to be possible.
THE
RECURSION RULE
Recursion
is not allowed to continue in Taasen. If a move is made with a White
piece, and then the opposing player simply reverses that move, and so
on, forever, Taasen would be a pointless game. Thus it is illegal for
a player to move the same White piece that an opponent had just moved
on their turn.
A
player may
not move any White piece that has just been moved in the previous
turn by their opponent.
By
the same token, if any piece has just been Pushed by the other
player, then that piece may not immediately be moved back to location
by the opposing player. Instead, the defending player, if they choose
to move that recently Pushed piece, they must move it anywhere EXCEPT
the location they were pushed from. The reason for this is simple: if
the defending piece could be moved immediately back, Pushing would be
rendered almost useless in many cases, and the situation would lend
itself to recursion, which, as stated, is not allowed.
A
player may
not move a piece that has just
been Pushed in the immediately previous
turn back to the exact space from whence it was Pushed, but must move
to any other
legal space.
GAMEPLAY
STRATEGY
Get
your pieces out of the corner as soon as possible, and try to keep
them out of any corner.
Before
making an opening move out of the dark corner spaces, try to pick
the best piece to oppose any nearby pieces.
Use
the blue 'sea' space wisely and carefully, likewise be wary of it.
The
'sea' is still a space, you cannot 'Push attack' through it as if it
were not there. You CAN push a piece across it to another space.
Be
careful not to block yourself in when blocking an opponent.
Stay
aware that there are THREE factions, even though there ae only two
actual players: White pieces are just as much of a threat.
Use
the White pieces too, but don't rely on them alone.
Anticipate
what the other player is going to do, not only with their own
pieces, but with any White ones as well.
Try
to set up 'traps' with seemingly pointless moves.
When
playing at Taasen, Push the Pauple until it perishes.
CONCLUSION
It
is my hope that the reader will enjoy and find interesting the game
of Taasen as it is played on Tryslmaistan Gryrnu, and very likely
even back in the days of Myrmil (or before). It should not be too
hard to construct a simple set out of various materials, if one is so
inclined. Taasen is a curious game which is the product of an alien
and extraversal culture, yet clearly somehow connected to our own.
May you enjoy Taasen!
Taasen
game depicted during play.
TAASEN
GOODIES OUT TO YOU. . .
The
astounding Benjamin James Edward Zealley, with some inspiration from
Laura Cecile Doyle, have brought Taasen to life on the computer,
under Windows! Now you can hot-seat play a game of Taasen from the
convenience of your own desktop! Download Taasen for Windows today!
WIN
98, 2000, and XP compatible TAASEN, 379 kb Zipped File
For
offline play, Jenn Dolari
of http://www.dolari.org
has
provided a PDF document download of printable Taasen Boards for your
color printer! You can download them here:
PDF
Taasen Boards.......28K Download, Zipped file
TAASEN
CLARIFICATIONS
Occasionally,
I get letters from people asking to clarify elements of the game.
Here are the questions and the answers, as reference! QUESTIONS
are in RED,
ANSWERS in BLACK
Can
a piece move into the space adjoining a piece which would otherwise
push it? In other words, can I move my Sciane next to a Thaume
of another color?
Yes.
The power to 'push' another piece is not as it is in earthly chess,
like 'taking' or 'threatening', it is a power that must be activated,
and last only as long as the turn of the player activating it, after
which it is 'off'. The activation occurs upon movement, which is to
say that if a piece is moved, then when it is placed upon the board,
at that instant, it has the 'power of push' and may affect one -and
only one- other piece, as appropriate. A piece simply sitting there,
has no threat. It cannot affect anything, or push. Indeed, when it is
the other player's turn, they cannot simply claim said immobile piece
is now 'active'...it must be physically moved to a new place on the
board, to become active. So, one strategy is to deliberately move
right beside an otherwise dangerous piece -in some circumstances- and
block it, and in so doing, be perfectly safe oneself. If the
dangerous piece cannot move, it cannot Push, and thus is rendered...useless.
Although
there are no "chain reaction" pushes, what happens in the
situation when this would arise? This is similar to the above
question, actually, because a piece can be pushed into the space next
to a piece that would push it back, or into the space next to a piece
that would be pushed by it. Do you just leave it there?
What happens on the next turn?
This
is what is meant by no chain reactions. A 'Pushed' piece is not made
'active' itself, because it is not the turn of the player who owns
that piece. To be able to 'Push', a piece MUST be moved as part of a
regular turn, by the player who owns that piece (or is controlling
the piece in the case of a neutral white piece), and physically moved
to another space upon the board than the one it started from.
Thus,
a pushed piece cannot affect anything it lands beside.
We
guessed that the principle is that a piece can only push (or crush)
when it has been moved by one of the players, not by just sitting
there, hence the answer to the first question is yes, and to the
second is "yes, just leave it there", but I wasn't able to
figure this out from the rules. It seemed a little
counter-intuitive, since one could prevent a push by snuggling up to
one's opponent's piece; hence the confusion.
"Snuggling
up" is indeed a strategy, and potentially a frustrating one. It
takes room to conduct a fight, immobility means inaction. Pieces can become
'Pinned Down'
If
a piece is moved so that it would push or crush two pieces, i.e. if
aThaume is moved between two Scianes, what happens? Does it
push one or both? If only one, who decides which one?
The
attacker decides which one (and only one) piece he is Pushing. The
defending player chooses where the pushed piece will go. If there is
no valid place to go, the piece is lost -Crushed.
When
a white piece is pushed, who decides where it goes? I presume
the player who didn't push it, but I'm not entirely sure.
Same
exact deal: the attacker decides which one (and only one) piece he
is Pushing. The defending player chooses where the pushed piece will
go. If there is no valid place to go, the piece is lost -Crushed.
This is true regardless of the colors of the pieces involved.
TAASEN
TRYSLMAISTAN
CHESS
A game
created by Jennfer Diane Reitz
Copyright
© 2001, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
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