| About Bushka |
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Here's the odd one out in the draughts family - not draughts at all really, more of a related species. Capture by contact Bushka's way of capture originates in Fanorona, a game from Madagascar. The rules of Fanorona can be found in many books and websites on abstract games. Bushka translates the idea of capture by contact into a draughts-like framework. I consider Bushka to be a draughts game the same way I consider an electric car to be a car. It's essentially the same vehicle powered by a different engine. Bushka looks like a draughts game and behaves like a draughts game. I wouldn't mind a new class of 'contact draughts' games, of which Bushka is the first representative. Linear movement and capture Linear movement, moving a line of men rather than a single one, came naturally to Bushka, where forces, by the nature of the way of capture, are initially more widely separated. Such a condition begs speedy development. Moving a single man may be considered a special case of it, a man being defined as a 'line of one'. Linear capture however differs from capture with a single piece (man or king) in that kings are never involved, and the capture always keeps to a particular line. Linear capture has no equivalent in draughts, and I ignored the idea to bring linear movement to a draughts game for some fifteen years (after I had basically retreated from the games world in 1986). Then a draughts game that fitted the idea came along in 'Croda', and Dameo happened, quite unintentionally, in less than two minutes. How 'weird' is Bushka? Draughts players may initially consider capture by contact 'weird'. But is 'killing' a man by leapfrogging over it any more strange than doing so by whamming it in the face? If anything, I'd consider the latter more effective. From a purely abstract point of view, both are formal agreements about a way to define capture in a '2 men on 3 squares' scenario. The fact that one is 'established' doesn't make the other any less interesting. On the contrary. Bushka © This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Java applet © This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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