Dig
Two to four diggers on a hillside, one shot a turn and eight shots each. Every shot takes a bite out of the ground, and the cells your shot removed are your score. Aim, hold fire for power, let go. The ground never grows back.
The rules
- Each seat has one digger with a hundred health, placed where the field will hold it. Nobody walks: a turn is an aim and a shot, and the seats fire in order.
- Eight shots each. The score is the cells of ground a shot removed, counted once it has settled, and they are yours whatever carved them: your shell, a cluster's pieces, or a rival's digger going out beside them.
- Four weapons: the bazooka, a shell on an arc the wind bends, about seven hundred cells out of flat ground; the grenade, which bounces for three seconds and then goes off; the shotgun, a straight ray and a small bite; and the cluster shell, which becomes five at the top of its arc. Clusters are counted: three a game. Dynamite is not offered.
- An explosion hurts everything in reach, less with distance, and throws it. A digger thrown a long way lands hard and is hurt again by the fall. A digger at zero health is out, and its going out is a small explosion of its own; a digger that leaves the field is lost. A digger that is out keeps the cells it dug and fires no more.
- The wind changes every turn and is shown before you aim. A shot is not a matter of chance: the same aim with the same wind does the same thing every time.
How a game ends
- When every digger has fired its eight shots, or has no more to fire, the most cells wins. An exact tie is a draw.
- At two seats a missed move deadline loses the game; at three or four the site plays the seat for you. A resignation above two seats retires the seat and the others play on; at two seats it is the other player's win.
Worth knowing before you start
- Power is the whole game with the bazooka: full power flies across the field, half power lands at your feet. The dotted arc while you hold fire is where the shell will go with no wind.
- Thick ground pays. A shell into a lip or a cave roof removes little; one into the solid body of the hill removes the most it can.
- Burying pays too, sometimes. A rival at low health is a shotgun away from firing no more, and the cells it dug stay on the board.
- With scripting off the page shows the ground's surface and where everyone stands; caves under the surface do not show there, and a shot needs the script.
The seed decides the hillside, where each digger stands and the wind each turn; it is published when the game ends. A shot is three numbers, replayed by the server, so the whole game can be checked from the log.
Dig terms
- A cell
- One square of ground. The score is how many your shots removed.
- A digger
- The one character a seat has. It never walks, and out is out.
- A crater
- The hole an explosion leaves. It never fills in.