Simplifying

Changes described in the previous post are mostly done. I'll continue working on the book, hence no update just yet. There would be no changes to rules, pieces, designs; I'll be just clarifying descriptions, most notably, movement of Shaman really needs to be simplified. Another issue is that I put a few examples in parallel into just one image. Obviously not ideal, but also not sure if it would really benefit from splitting it up.

As for changes described in the previous post, Starchild has been made transparent to all pieces, Unicorn is now transparent to Shaman, and Shaman is now transparent to all own pieces (i.e. in the same color), and to opponent's Shaman. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge; I'm not really happy with this kind of a blunt design, lumping all pieces into just three categories. On the other hand it does make sense, and can't be really more selective, while also keeping its simplicity.

One planned change that didn't make it, is that Starchild can be activated only on trance- and miracle-fields. While that can be done, both Waves and Starchilds are kinda life-line; if player ever looses all of Waves and Starchilds, (s)he cannot cascade anymore, and cannot resurrect any captured pieces, which is a major setback. To leave opportunity to save at least some of those pieces, I decided to keep activation of Starchilds and Waves on its step-fields.

While castling is special, one-off move, in reality is not that special compared to e.g. resurrection, and so it can stand to a reason that it too should participate in a mundane cascades. So, Wave is now set as not blocking when castling, and Starchild is blocking only destination fields of castling pieces. As a result, castling can now also start a cascade.

With all of those changes made, I do plan on revisiting movement of Starchild, its activation rules, just to check if all of those are sound. In fact, the book as a whole could receive a little reading from me. Yes, really. 

While I did wrote the book, changes are always made to one page, one example, one paragraph at a time. So, keeping track of all rules (and exceptions to those rules) is nigh on impossible. And yet, it's necessary if one is to check that all things are inherently congruent, to themselves, and between each other. So, I'm going to re-read the book to see if rules (and their exceptions) could be simplified while keeping their original spirit intact.