Scurry

Scurry is a two-player network connection game with wild swings in material. The game has elements of Lines of Action and Ricochet Robot, but feels like a blend of hide-and-seek and a game of chicken. The endgame puzzles are challenging and often surprising. Scurry is highly recommended!

In a nutshell, the game board is set up with double-sided acorn tiles, with each player placing tiles own-side-up and then their squirrel tokens.

On a turn, the active player adds another tile to the board, opponent-side-up. Then the player's squirrel token scurrys from opponent tile to opponent tile using line of sight to visit as many tiles as possible and flips them on arrival. Line of sight is blocked by tiles and the opponent's token. If two or more opponent tiles are in the line of sight of the mover's token (in different directions), any one of them can be visited. This continues until no opponent tiles are within the token's line of sight. The last acorn tile visited is consumed (i.e., removed from the board). 🐿️

The game is won, at the end of a turn, if all acorn tiles are owned by the moving player. Otherwise, it is the next player's turn. A player can also win if their opponent is unable to move to at least two tiles on their turn.

This summary should suffice, if not, more detatiled rules follow.

Inspirational

Components

The game of Scurry requires the following:

A 6 x 6 tri-hexagon game board (a hexagon consisting of equilateral triangles).
31 double-sided acorn tiles, with brown and gray sides
Two squirrel tokens, one brown, one gray

Set Up

The game is played on the vertices (or nodes) of a tri-hexagon of size 6. Players start with 12 double-sided tiles (counts of 4 to 15 work) and one token pawn. Figures 1 to 4 show standard and random setups. To set up the board, starting with the brown player, players alternate placing tiles, own-side-up, and then their single pawn token on empty vertices.

Figure 1. Standard Setup using 15 tiles per player.

Figure 2. Standard Setup, for a shorter game, using 8 tiles per player.

Figure 3. Manual Setup using 12 tiles per player. 12 tilesoffers a good number of decisions per player turn. See stats below.

Figure 4. Manual Setup using 4 tiles per player. This is a good start to get a feel for the game. These games are very quick. Play best of three games. If acorns are placed randomly, it is possible for the first player to win on his or her first turn. In this case only, the second player get one chance for a comeback.

Game Play

The Brown player moves first. Players then alternate turns.

On a turn, which will consist of multiple moves, players must perform the following actions in order:

1. To start a turn, a player places a tile, opponent-side-up, on any empty vertex of the board. If needed, this will ensure at least one token movement. If a player misplaces the leadoff tile and has not yet moved, the player may take a mulligan.

2. Next, the player repeatedly moves their token to opponent-side-up tiles, using line-of-sight, and then flips the tile over upon reaching it to claim ownership. Tokens move like chess queens. Tokens may not jump over any tiles or the opponent’s token during movement. Tiles once visited cannot be revisited during the same player turn because ownership changes on arrival. This move action must be performed at least twice, and must be performed as many times as is possible. A player loses if unable to move at least twice. (This prevents a player from stalling by moving back and forth on consecutive turns.) Players may freely choose which path to take when multiple tiles are in sight.

3. Finally, when moving is no longer possible, the last visited tile is removed from the board.

At the end of a turn, if a player owns all the tiles on the board, that player wins the game. A player also wins if their opponent is unable to move at least twice. It is possible to trap a token behind its own tiles.

Figure 5. Brown to play and capture all tiles. Where should Brown place her leadoff tile? Note that Brown places and moves to gray tiles.

Figure 6. With the placement of a gray tile at the highlighted vertex, Brown can now visit all the gray tiles.

Figure 7. Normally Brown would win at this point but this is her first turn and players started with 4 tiles each, so Gray get one chance to survive.

Figure 8. Can Gray visit all the Brown tiles and make a comeback?

Figure 9. The highlighted tile will work. The vertex to the southwest of the highlighted tile will work too.

Figure 10. Gray wins the game.

Game Analysis

This updated version of Scurry came about after the original version of Scurry was implemented using Ludii General Game System, version 1.3.14. While programming the Ludii script it became apparent that the tri-hex board made the game easier to play, and setups could be generated randomly and were just as challenging as deliberate setups by AI players (Alpha-Beta and UCT). See the table and graphs below.The left graph has yellow highlighted lines with very similar slopes for Avg.# of decisions per trial and also for Avg. # of player switches per trial. Placing 12 tiles manually had the highest number of decisions per trial with players having about 5 decisions to make per turn.

Scurry appears to be a balanced game, with the first player winning somewhere in the range of 47 to 53%. This is based on the average of 330 trials generated by A-B and UCT. Z-scores and confidence levels were not used when coming to this conclusion.

A Ludii 1.3.14 script for Scurry can be downloaded from the Game Files page. Look for Scurry.lud. This file uses discs and pawns instead of acorns and squirrels because the custom icons are not yet available in Ludii 1.3.14. Hopefully, Scurry with its custom icons will be accepted and added to Ludii 1.3.15 in the near future.🤞

More Puzzles

Scurry games end with challenging puzzles.

Puzzle 1. Brown to place and move to win.Place and move gray tiles. (Two solutions) See Puzzle Solutions at the end of these rules.

Puzzle 2. Gray to place and move to win.Place and move brown tiles.

Puzzle 3. Brown to place and move to win. (Three solutions)

Puzzle Solutions

Solution 1. Brown places an acorn tile at c4 and wins in 11 moves. Placing an acorn tile at e6 also wins.

Solution 2. Gray drops a Brown acorn tile at f5 and wins in 14 moves. Notice that the path crosses the Gray squirrel’s starting location twice!

Solution 3. Brown places an acorn tile at f5 and wins in 21 moves! Placing an acorn tile at c2 or d3 would also work.

Please note these game rules may be duplicated and distributed via the web. All rights are reserved. Those that wish to program or sell this game in any form should contact the author at philleduc.pled@gmail.com for permission or a license to do so.

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