Sudoku For Two

It turns out I just can't get enough of the World Boardgaming Championships so recently I've been trawling boardgamegeek for week summaries from anyone willing to post one. It's interesting to see other people's takes on the week. (Ok, and I'm looking for people talking about me, rare as that is.) Only one has really angered me so far, though that's a story for another day.

One thing I kept reading about was how people had been playing a lot of games online. In and of itself this isn't surprising, of course. The surprising part was the where. People kept referencing a German boardgame site, but it wasn't my old standby Brettspielwelt. Instead they were all playing on Yucata. Some of the same games are even on both sites! The difference is that while BSW is played real time, Yucata is all turn based. So a game on BSW gets done a lot faster, but it has to be played in one sitting. Yucata could be played in real time as well, but if someone wanders away the game doesn't get ruined, it just gets delayed. You can also play lots of games at once, and with people who sleep while you're awake, and it will all work out.

So I went to check it out yesterday and found a very interesting game on the site. They call it Sudoku Moyo. Essentially you take turns with another player filling in a Sudoku grid. Each player is responsible for 5 of the 9 sections on the grid. (Both players are responsible for the middle and it has to get filled in first.) The trick to the game is you're not trying to build a completed Sudoku puzzle. All your moves have to be legal when you make them, but they don't have to lead to a finished grid. In fact, you're trying to make moves such that your opponent can no longer make legal plays in their sections of the puzzle.

Here's the starting grid from my first game, for example. (It turns out you can replay every game you play on there too, which is awesome.) I control the lighter grids with the red numbers. My opponent controls the darker grids with the blue numbers. I'm playing first, and have to play to the middle grid.

The first thing I did was look to see if I could attack my opponent off the bat. Look at the middle-right grid, and where the number 6 could go. The only legal place for the number 6 in that section is the lower-left spot. So if we were actually doing a sudoku I would know that had to be a 6. But in this game I want to kill that space off. So for my first move I stick the number 6 in the lower-right hand spot of the middle grid, like so.

Note how the board updated to show that the 6 no longer has any legal spots to go in that section. (It has an X through the 6 on the side of the board.)

Here's the finished board. Note how the game nicely fills in spaces that can't be used with a nice big X for you. The winner is the person who played the last piece. (Or, I guess, the loser is the one who first has to pass.)

It's a fun little abstract game. You should challenge me (Ziggyny) on the site. In this or anything else!