Issue 23 - Winter and Spring 2022
Winkel-Advokat [Devil's Advocate] is a game by Roland Siegers, published by Schmidt Spiele in 1986. The game is played on an 8x8 board with numbers in each square, rising in value towards the middle of the board. The game is for two to four players, although I suspect that it is best for two. Each player starts with an "Advocate" piece in its corner of matching colour. The Advocates make one Rook move followed by another Rook move perpendicular to the first. On the square where the Advocate pivots, the player drops a piece of her colour. If this piece can jump over one or more opponent's pieces, in the manner of checkers, then the player may do so, capturing the pieces jumped. When the board fills, and one of the players cannot move the Advocate, the game ends. Players score the values of the squares their pieces occupy plus an extra point for each opposing piece captured.
Winkel-Advokat is a good enough game and interesting in its strategy—should you go straight for the high-scoring squares in the centre or start placing pieces around the edges of the board where they are harder for the opponent to capture? In 1999, Goldsieber Spiele published a game that Siegers developed from Winkel-Advokat, called Cabale. While Winkel-Advokat is a pretty good game, Cabale is excellent. I hold off from calling it a "great game" for one reason alone, explained below.
Instead of a squared board, Cabale uses a base 5 hex-hex board, with again numbers on each space, 1's at the edge and increasing to 16 in the centre. The Advocate is now a "Runner," which deposits a piece of its colour, a "Block," on the space where it pivots. Now however, the players have the choice of dropping a single Block or a Double Block. Double Blocks score double at the end of the game, but captured Double Blocks score 3 points each at the end. Another change is the use of "blockades." Board lines delineating the hexagons are thick around hexagons closer to the edge of the board and thin around the group of hexagons in the centre of the board. At the end of her move, the player may place a blockade on any of the thick lines. Blockades subsequently cannot be moved over by the Runners or jumped over by the Blocks.
Don Kirkby and I played Cabale very many times in the early 2000's. This game is brilliant, with intricate tactics and interesting strategy. One of the innovations we felt was necessary was a score sheet upon which we could keep track of the difference in scores on a move-by-move basis. It is important to know exactly what the score difference is, especially close to the end of the game. Because the game seemed so interesting, we kept playing.
However, as we got better, a problem emerged: we would reach a reasonably balanced position close to the endgame, but when the endgame played out, we found ourselves asking, "Why did I win?" or "Why did I lose?" The position itself seemed to give no indication that one player or the other was stronger, and the endgame felt chaotic, in the sense that the result seemed to depend on arbitrarily small differences between the positions. The outcome, therefore, was ultimately unpredictable. Eventually, we abandoned the game as broken for this reason. Nevertheless, the feeling has never left us that there might be another, deeper layer of strategy that we simply weren't seeing. I hope there is.
My Cabale opponent, Don Kirkby, has been designing new domino games and puzzles, which are recorded in his Donimoes website. One of these new games, Domino Runners, is inspired by Winkel-Advokat and Cabale, and we have included the rules here in this issue. All you need is a set of double-six Dominoes and some counters. Domino Runners is an excellent game in its own right, but in addition it will give you a good sense of the workings of Winkel-Advokat and Cabale. ~ KH
Winkel-Advokat is a good enough game and interesting in its strategy—should you go straight for the high-scoring squares in the centre or start placing pieces around the edges of the board where they are harder for the opponent to capture? In 1999, Goldsieber Spiele published a game that Siegers developed from Winkel-Advokat, called Cabale. While Winkel-Advokat is a pretty good game, Cabale is excellent. I hold off from calling it a "great game" for one reason alone, explained below.
Instead of a squared board, Cabale uses a base 5 hex-hex board, with again numbers on each space, 1's at the edge and increasing to 16 in the centre. The Advocate is now a "Runner," which deposits a piece of its colour, a "Block," on the space where it pivots. Now however, the players have the choice of dropping a single Block or a Double Block. Double Blocks score double at the end of the game, but captured Double Blocks score 3 points each at the end. Another change is the use of "blockades." Board lines delineating the hexagons are thick around hexagons closer to the edge of the board and thin around the group of hexagons in the centre of the board. At the end of her move, the player may place a blockade on any of the thick lines. Blockades subsequently cannot be moved over by the Runners or jumped over by the Blocks.
Don Kirkby and I played Cabale very many times in the early 2000's. This game is brilliant, with intricate tactics and interesting strategy. One of the innovations we felt was necessary was a score sheet upon which we could keep track of the difference in scores on a move-by-move basis. It is important to know exactly what the score difference is, especially close to the end of the game. Because the game seemed so interesting, we kept playing.
However, as we got better, a problem emerged: we would reach a reasonably balanced position close to the endgame, but when the endgame played out, we found ourselves asking, "Why did I win?" or "Why did I lose?" The position itself seemed to give no indication that one player or the other was stronger, and the endgame felt chaotic, in the sense that the result seemed to depend on arbitrarily small differences between the positions. The outcome, therefore, was ultimately unpredictable. Eventually, we abandoned the game as broken for this reason. Nevertheless, the feeling has never left us that there might be another, deeper layer of strategy that we simply weren't seeing. I hope there is.
My Cabale opponent, Don Kirkby, has been designing new domino games and puzzles, which are recorded in his Donimoes website. One of these new games, Domino Runners, is inspired by Winkel-Advokat and Cabale, and we have included the rules here in this issue. All you need is a set of double-six Dominoes and some counters. Domino Runners is an excellent game in its own right, but in addition it will give you a good sense of the workings of Winkel-Advokat and Cabale. ~ KH