New WYPS rules; two racks.

I haven't seen any feedback on the latest changes to WYPS and was curious what others think.

Myself, I really miss the shared rack; it seems that a bit of the strategy has been stripped out of the game w/ the new two rack setup.

Anyone else have thoughts?

Yeah, I agree with you. Now, it seems the game is based mostly on luck. You have no idea what letters you will get, so you can't plan ahead.

Also, with a shared rack, if there was some awful racks, both players had to deal with them. With separate racks, you have a nice rack, making 7 letters words while your opponent struggles to make 3 letters words. The shared rack also has some kind of luck, but at least, by seeing what is coming, you can plan accordingly.

Another problem is the 8 letters rack in the size 7 version. That makes it really easy to pull off 7 letters words, which kinda ruins the game. 7 letters was much better in my opinion.

I also like the shared rack more and argument that it makes it possible to set the opponent with small words I considered as a tactical choice but apparantly Richard thought it ruined the game.

I also like most the previous rules. They were most "strategic", althought I've met some players that got annoyed when I tried to make it difficult for them to put good words... because I used few letters in order to avoid them to get "good letters".

I don't dislike the idea of having two racks, but only if there are also two bags, so every player will get the same letters.

Luck now is increased a lot. What if a player has only consonants, for example? He will lose points on the board and also consume few letters, so the advantage for the opponent is HUGE.

Lookahead tactic is not completely removed because you know what opponents letters will be, but you have absolutely no control on which letters you and your opponent will get.

I agree with pensando. Choosing word length to give your opponent bad letters or guaranteeing that your opponent will have to give you a good letter is a major part of the game.

The new rules are crap. I stopped playing it. Send me a message when the previous rules are re-established.

As a former top WYPS player returning to LG, I agree that these changes have ruined the game. I will not play the new version.

Some points:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons - problem with common racks

2. You must now very carefully manage your letters in rack: not to have the same letters, always keep some vowels, rid off hard letters (Q, X, J, ...) etc..

3. You know which letters are in bag and you can to estimate your risk. For example if is in bag a lot of vowels, you can risk and play long word with all own vowels. And vice versa.

We might note that Richard listed point 1 as a joke. WYPS is a zero-sum game with only two participants. The Tragedy of the Commons, which is necessarily non-zero sum, does not apply.

well, after more than 500 joyful games of Wyps, I have to say that this new rules completely turn my motivation down. Please consider offering the choice among the variants.

@ tomletermite: agreed. There are many variants of WYPS now, and although all of them are interesting, some are more than the other. I still prefer the very first variant, and might not play the two-rack variant at all.

Richard,

I've read on the WYPS blog your reasoning for changing to two racks:

"With old rules, players often damage rack for opponent. For example deliberately use all vowels or they let the same letters in rack."

It cannot be said that having a common rack is a flaw in the game for that reason. Indeed, trying to leave your opponent with poor moves is the crux of nearly all strategy games. What about the game board? Both players have that in common also. To remove the possibility to "damage" the board for the opponent, are you considering changing the game to have two boards also? Is not the ability to take away your opponents good letters AND good board spaces bad by your reasoning?

The game was much better with common letters; in fact, I second bloke's nod in favor of the first version of WYPS.

Your 2nd and 3rd points (having to manage and track the remaining bag letters) would still apply with a common rack, so I do not see them as relevant to the discussion of common vs separate racks.

I must admit that "line" WYPS was a disappointment at a first glance, but I now think is a good choice comparing to the very first version. In the first one you very often were struggling for one single letter in the middle, and it often became boring and frustrating. This does not happen with line WYPS, but it suffers by other problems and the new versions didn't fix them in my opinion.

I still have to finish my first games of "ultimate". Anyway it appears obvious that the classic variants have too less "freedom", with luck driving too much the decisions of the players, while this variant gives complete and unconstrained "freedom". This may make chaotic, it has to be checked, but at a first glance it appears that there must be a middle point in which rules don't depend too much from luck bust still give some boundaries to the players. Complete freedom is rarely a good choice in game designing imho.

I think the first version was still the best - the strategy is much much deeper than it seems on first glance. The trick was not the fight for one letter in the middle - that was just the hook you had to hang on. Every move, you had to flip the central letter back, but at the same time, the idea was to slowly build up for the winning move outside of it. So while you flip that one letter back and forth, you in addition fill strategic locations (and they can't be flipped back because your opponent must - same as you - flip back the central letter). The total of these strategic positions finally were the win. Or not, if the opponent did better.

None of the other WYPS version came even near to it (IMHO), so I stopped playing WYPS altogether.

There are three attributes in rules:

1. Winner condition. It can be First connect, Full board, Unbreakable connect - current version.

First connect is nicest variant, but require play on larger board. On board 13 was average length of game only 12-13 moves (in 1st league). For example this game had only 7 moves:

Game #1203390

Full board could be very tedious when is big difference between players. Unbreakable connect is probably best winner condition.

2. Rack Because first version of game was played as First connect version, rack must be short (4 or 5 letters, 3 letters on smallest board) and because game was very short rack was shared. But still game could be finished by some magic and unexpected word. For example in next position black won:

[game;id:1110410;move:10]

But when game is not played with First connect, every player could have own rack and rack can be larger.

3. Shape of word. In current version could be letters only in one line, but all used opponent stones are turned over. In original version player could create zig-zag word but he could turn over only one opponent letter.

It has some positives and some negatives. Line version is more about strategy but zig-zag version is more about word searching. For example average word length is in line version only 4.6 and in original version it was more than 5.6 (and rack size is longer !). In line version are not simple games with double row strategy- there is example of such game:

Game #1141976

Double row strategy could be eliminated with simple change of rules: if shape of word will be zigzag, player can change only one letter. But when shape will be in line, player can turn over all opponent letters.

But I do not like zig-zag variant because there is often battle for one letter and whole game decide some bizarre word. For example game 1203387.

I still prefer the original version over any of the others - by a large margin. But I think it was most fun on larger boards, without seeing that as a problem. I, too, have stopped playing WYPS now.

I prefer winning conditions: First connect. Rack: Four (possibly five) letters common. Shape of word: Free, swap max one stone. Board size: Large. Yep, that's the original version, all right.