Tips & Strategies (11)

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Tips & Strategies (11)

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“Use your pieces effectively”

Arimaa pieces form a straight hierarchy: elephant > camel > horse > dog > cat > rabbit.

It is important to use your pieces effectively; for example the best thing your elephant can do is usually threatening the opposing camel. Your camel should threaten opposing horses while avoiding their elephant and so on. Using the elephant to attack a horse or worse a weaker piece is often a waste of power. Of course if it’s a short time blitzkrieg action – go for it. But as a strategical commitment it is usually disadvantageous.

This resemble playing Bridge a little bit: with your ace you are glad to take an opponents king and not too happy to get only a jack or a 10.

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“Hostages and Frames”

The Elephant is a very important part of most attacks and defenses, so it’s nice to be able to tie your opponent’s down. Two of the most common ways to do this are the Frame, wherein a piece is stuck on a trap, with only a single piece in support, so that if the supporter moves the piece on the trap is lost and the hostage, where a piece is frozen within flipping distance of a trap, so that if the trap is abandoned it can be captured.

Frames: These usually require the elephant to be the piece in support to prevent capture, as weaker pieces can often be pulled away. To use a frame effectively, one needs to prevent the opponent from breaking it by either pulling or pushing one of the blocking pieces away, this can quickly lead to trap loss. Another thing that often needs to be done is to rotate strong pieces out of the frame to fight in other areas of the board. Ideally you can tie your opponent’s elephant down defending a horse with only a horse and seven small pieces (dog, cat, rabbit) or two horses and four small pieces, which leaves your elephant and camel free to terrorize the rest of the board. However, be mindful that the elephant does have the ability to leave, don’t leave your camel exposed or you might find yourself in a disadvantageous trade.

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“Before you make your move...”

Before you make your move check the following:

* Your rabbits: Is any of them able to reach the goal line? If so – finish the game!

* Opponent’s rabbits: Is any of them going to reach the goal line next move? If so – try to intercept it.

* The four traps: Is any of your pieces in danger of being captured? Are you able to capture an opponent’s piece for nothing or for a weaker piece? If so – act appropriately.

Following these steps helps avoiding the most painful blunders. If you think that these tips are all obvious – I’ll say: yes, they are, but errors caused by not following them happen even during Arimaa World Championships.

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14 of 15 gamers found this helpful
“Wiki”
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“Setup hints”

A few setup guidelines for beginners:

* Don’t put too many rabbits on your front rank. Any number within the range 0-4 is reasonable.

* Good columns for forward rabbits are: a, c, f, and h.

* Horses like your front rank and columns b and g.

* Put your elephant on a centralized position (columns c to f) on your front rank.

* If you play silver don’t place your elephant directly in front of the golden one.

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“Playing Arimaa with a Chess set”

Arimaa has been designed to be playable with a standard Chess set. To do that you should:

* Put four flat objects (like tokens or coins of appropriate size) on the trap squares: c3, c6, f3, f6.

* Substitute Arimaa pieces with Chess counterparts. The exact substitution is completely up to you and your opponent, but here are three most common ways to do it:

Height substitution. A taller piece is considered stronger. I recommend this one as the most obvious. Unfortunately it does not work for some sets with pieces of similar heights.

Center/side substitution. A piece more centered in the Chess opening position is consider stronger. It leads to King > Queen > Bishop > Knight > Rook > Pawn (usually the same as for the first method).

Chess strength substitution. A piece considered more valuable in Chess is taken as stronger. This leads to King > Queen > Rook > Bishop > Knight > Pawn.

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Paladin
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“The Arimaa Community”

If you want to play this game online, meet a number of players from various countries, or participate in major events including World Championships, visit the Arimaa Community at:

http://www.arimaa.com

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“On equal trades while being ahead”

Here are a few strategic guidelines regarding equal trades. They assume capturing pieces of the same rank (e.g. a dog for a dog) by both players. They also assume that such a trade does not change positional situation too much (for example does not leave another piece unprotected or trap unguarded).

* If you are ahead by one piece of a kind it is usually beneficial to you to trade one of your pieces for the remaining one.

* If you are ahead by one piece it is usually OK for you to trade pieces of a higher rank than the rank of your advantage. This is because the quantitative advantage becomes more and more important as the board gets emptier.

* If you are ahead by one piece you should not look for trading pieces of lower ranks, but you should not avoid it too much either. Such a trade improves your quantitative advantage but weakens your qualitative advantage.

And of course if you are behind by a piece you should use reversals of the above tips…

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“Fast and Simple Game”

For a short, quick, and simple game, each side can use only 4 rabbits and 2 cats lined up in any fashion on the home row. Setup order is still the same, with gold setting up first, then silver. Only the first row of your side of the board is used for setup, not both.

Based on the amount of time you have available, you could experiment with other equal setups, such as 5 rabbits, 2 cats, and 1 dog.

This house rule was provided by the game’s creator, Omar Syed.

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“Unequal Armies”

This is a good variant for shorter games, and also for comparing relative strengths of pieces against each other. Basically, each side gets 10 points to spend on pieces using the following point system:

Rabbit: 1 point
Cat: 2 points
Dog: 3 points
Horse: 4 points
Camel: 5 points
Elephant: 6 points

After each side has spent their ten points, then set up and play as normal, except with the fewer pieces you have chosen.

This house rule was provided by the game’s creator, Omar Syed.

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“Dicey Move”

This is one of my favorite variants, especially when the skill levels are different, such as when you’re playing against kids or teaching somebody how to play, you could apply this house rule to yourself only.

Normally you get 4 moves per turn. In this variant, instead, you roll a die at the start of your turn. On a roll of 1, 2, or 3, you get that number of moves. On a roll of 4, 5, or 6, you get the maximum 4 moves.

This house rule was provided by the game’s creator, Omar Syed.

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