I’d like to have a topic to post and discuss ideas for new go variants. It doesn’t need to be well thought-through. For example:
Anti Go
Instead of placing a stone, you remove a stone, then fill some (or each?) adjacent territory that’s next to only your colour with stones of the opponents colour (basically the inverse of a normal go move).
Goal ???
Starting Position ???
Black Hole Go
Whenever a chain gets captured, the intersections beneath it collapse to a single node with the combined outward connections. (Or equivalently: Future moves on any of these points fill up the entire area)
In Go stones stay still once placed, in Stay stones can still go somewhere else. On your turn you can either place a stone, or move one of your stones already on the board to an empty point adjacent to it.
A small reminder toward readers not very familiar with the forum, we have a go variant category with over 70 topics so maybe check it before contributing.
The concept of “Anti” games has been explored with other games. It usually flips the winning condition while keeping other mechanics largely intact. For example, in Anti Chess, the goal is to force your opponent to checkmate you, and in Anti Backgammon, the goal is to bear off last.
Maybe a way to do Anti Go would be to do Anti Capture Go, where passing and self-capture is not allowed, and the goal is to force your opponent to capture you first.
I think after 20 moves, Black is now forced to capture White, and thus, White will win. I’m sure the play is quite sloppy and suboptimal. I don’t really know what I’m doing here.
I think that this is essentially the same as the “Anti Atari Go” linked by @antonTobi:
It’s a nested game variant. The outer game is essentially a game of Stratego, except to resolve each capture, instead of just comparing the ranks of the pieces, an entire sub-game of Go is played, with handicap set according to the difference in ranks of the Stratego pieces involved, and the winner of that Go sub-game determines which Stratego piece prevails.
There may be some additional special rules needed to handle bombs, miners, spies, and flags.
As an alternative or in addition to handicap, it could be a team game, with different players assigned to the different pieces. If you don’t have that many go-playing friends, maybe it’s more practical to change Stratego for Jungle and then it could even be a forum game because the pieces are visible.
To keep up the pace, perhaps we could have simultaneous moves, and when there are overlapping attacks, we resolve them with rengo.
Well, a downside of Jungle, as opposed to Stratego, is missing out on the StrategoGo naming. However, maybe we could call your proposal “Jungo”? And if we want to mix in some element of physical skill and a bit of chance, perhaps we could also mix in “Jengo”.
Just thought about life and death consequences. I think I solved in my head that a bulky six in the corner is alive regardless of outer liberties. (But there is a high risk of me having gotten this wrong.)
Players place torches that illuminate the surrounding area for some time.
or
Each turn players can choose and look at a small part of the board (e.g. a 3x3 square).
//Edit: Any ideas how the Ko and Suicide rules should work in Fog of war Go? If we validate moves with respect to the “true position”, and let players change their move in case it’s not allowed, then this potentially gives players additional information.
