Gambit
With no small amount of pride, Diamond lay down her pen, tidied up her papers and returned her completed homework to her bag. Sure, she’d needed Copperwing’s help more than once, but most of the work had been her own and she’d made serious headway towards a better understanding of the subject. All in all, going to Auburn’s house had been the best decision she’d made all year besides accepting their friendship in the first place.
Now, though, the real fun should begin. Dinky was visibly shaking with glee at the prospect of introducing Diamond to her favourite game, and whilst ‘Legends of The Three Kingdoms’ sounded like exactly the sort of nerd-fest she’d been avoiding like the plague, she kept an open mind and tried not to make any premature judgements.
As she and Copperwing watched, Dinky and Auburn began collecting things and depositing them on the table. First came several small boxes roughly a third of a suitcase in size; each had a stylised symbol emblazoned upon their otherwise dull, dark-coloured exterior. The first three: navy blue, ebony and dark crimson respectively, were, Diamond guessed, to do with the three kingdoms of old referenced in the game’s title.
Since no conclusive descriptions of the kingdoms’ banners remained, some artistic licence had clearly been taken. The symbol of a wing, feathers replaced by various bladed weapons and backed by the outline of a spearhead, clearly represented the pegasi; whereas the stylised, armour-encased hoof enclosed within a circular cog stood for the earth ponies; and the unicorns’ symbol was a minimalistic horn wreathed in curling wisps of magic and accompanied by a miniature sun on one side and a crescent moon on the other.
There were three more boxes of the same size, albeit lightly coloured and with darker symbols; the closest was a muted shade of lime green, and its companions were golden yellow and rich lilac: a clear contrast to the first three. Upon these lay less obvious symbols: a jagged horn within a hexagon; a clenched, taloned fist upon a paw-print; and the grinning, hooded skull of a pony.
Next came a far larger box, labelled with the game logo and other information – Diamond assumed when she saw the box’s size that this was where the board was kept.
In a sense she was right. Although there was no board in the conventional sense, there were the materials with which to construct their playing field: a vast collection of hexagonal tiles, which Dinky was already removing and sorting into piles.
Last was a small velvet bag, the clacking sound it made when it hit the table hinting at its contents just as much as the image of dice emblazoned on its side did.
Just as soon as Dinky had finished sorting the tiles, she began removing them from their piles and snapping them together on the table top, apparently working from some set of instructions in the booklet she’d taken from inside the largest box.
Diamond looked on in wonderment as the structure came together, rising from the table into the rough shape of a hilly landscape with a serpentine gully through the middle of it. It wasn’t particularly detailed, but it was a lot more impressive than a chequered chessboard – she saw what Copperwing had meant; this was a far more involved game than anything she’d ever seen.
“Right.” Said Auburn, turning her attention from the strategy guide her muzzle had been buried in to instead face her friends. “We need to decide who’s going to play as what faction. I call pegasi - you want to be unicorns again, Dinky?”
“Actually, I thought I’d give the earth ponies a try this time.”
“Okay, how about you, Copper?”
“Unicorns.” The pegasus grimaced, looking apologetically at Diamond as she made her choice. “I know it’s your first game and all, but I wouldn’t stand a chance against Auburn with any of the wild cards... Sorry. Hey - who knows, maybe you’ll find you have a knack for non-standard gameplay.”
“It’s okay… What are the wild cards, anyway?”
“They’re essentially the oddball factions; they don’t play the same as the main three. They tend to have at least one significant advantage, but they’re also really vulnerable to certain things:
“You’ve got your Gryphons, with earth pony strength and pegasus manoeuvrability, but no heavy weapons or armour.
“Then there are the Changelings, who can apply encountered units’ traits to themselves. The downside being that for five turns, each positive attribute is reduced and each negative one increased, starting at five points’ difference and reducing by one each turn until normal.
“And then you have the Death’s Head Raiders, whose every action – attack, defense, moves per turn, you name it – is determined by a roll of the dice. Roll badly and you could lose yourself the game, but if luck’s on your side you might defeat a force twice your size.”
Diamond took a moment for the information to sink in. The gryphons seemed a safe bet, but she wasn’t sure if the strength and manoeuvrability was worth the loss of tactical options. The changelings sounded like they were a better faction from a strategic point of view, but she wasn’t convinced her first game was the time to try and outwit her far more experienced friends.
The raiders were out of the question, though. Diamond immensely disliked having luck dictate her life at the best of times, so to lose a game because a roll of a dice screwed her over was not something she wanted to happen - ever.
“Gryphons or Changelings, either one will do... I know, I’ll roll the dice: even for Gryphons, odd for Changelings.”
She scooped up the dice and rolled it across the table, where it collided with Dinky’s structure and pinged off; spinning wildly. It slowed, tilted as if to land with the four-dot face pointed upwards, but rotated some more as it fell and stopped at last with five dots triumphantly facing the sky.
“Changelings it is, then.” Said Diamond, reaching over to take the lime box containing her units. She opened it and took one out, turning it over in her hooves to examine it: it was quite detailed for something this small, and she liked the design, but she couldn’t shake the feeling something was missing in comparison with the others.
Of course: hers were still dull and grey, identical to each other; whereas every unit her friends possessed had been painted – some minimally, some with great attention to detail – in such a way as to make each one unique amongst its brethren. Something inside her itched to change that, and she resolved to ask Auburn if she could decorate them herself.
Dinky clipped the last few tiles onto the top of her landscape; colouring the battlefield various shades of green, and adding the deep blue of a river at the bottom of the gully. The final few were special: these, when clipped to the tile below, projected a hazy, detail-less image into the air above; forming trees, long grass and ruined buildings – just one more echelon of complexity, and hopefully fun, to be added to the game.
*
A little while later, Diamond and her friends sat around the completed playing field, unit cases open in front of each of them. At one end of the table sat the two differently sized dice and at the other lay a deck of small hexagonal cards, similar – albeit smaller – decks of which also lay on the inside of each player’s box. Diamond didn’t know what they were for, but trusted that it would be explained soon, along with the rest of the game.
This explanation came sooner than she’d expected, delivered by Auburn, speaking in her slow, deliberate drawl. “Alright, I’m going to do my best to explain this to you, Diamond, but if anything doesn’t make any sense just say so and I’ll try to reword it a little better.
“The aim of the game is to either kill off all your opponents’ units or have at least three quarters of the playing field under your control. The first one is tough and pretty time consuming, but the game field is about two metres long and half a metre wide so victory B isn’t easy either. You got all that?”
Diamond nodded, repeating Auburn’s words in an attempt to memorise them: “Kill everything or control half the board… got it.”
“Cool,” Auburn grinned, “Now, most of the game relies on something called energy. You spend it to carry out any actions – besides resting, of course – and you get a little more of it per turn on top of what each unit starts with. Every faction except the Earth Ponies starts with five energy for each unit, and gets two more per turn, with the exception of the Pegasi.”
“So… five energy to start with, two more gained each turn, and I spend it on making my pieces do what I want?”
“Yep. Now, the last main thing is summoning units. Each unit is part of a tier – from one to four – and you can place as many units as you want, so long as their tier numbers add up to four. You have to decide whether you just want more units, or whether you want more powerful ones – how well you can balance the two is a big factor in who wins or loses.
“You can only bring in units every fifth turn – as well as on the first turn – but it’s sometimes a good idea to bring in less than the maximum – or none at all – and save up your points for later. Also, starting with turn five and continuing every fifth turn from there, a player takes a card from the centre pile and whatever effect it carries stands until the five turns are up and a new card is drawn. That’s about it; though you should probably take a look at the hoofbook in your box, too – it has all the moves your units can do and how much energy it takes to do them, along with the lore, which is actually really interesting.”
Stepping in before her sister could go off on a tangent about the merits of lore, Copperwing wasted no extra time in kicking off the game. “Now that’s settled, shall we start?” she asked. “I’ll roll first.”
She rolled the smaller of the two dice, which came up as a two. Dinky rolled next: a five, then Auburn: a three. Diamond took the dice and rolled it herself: “Two”, she said.
“Dinky’s first, then.” Stated Auburn; and the butter-maned unicorn placed her first three units carefully on the playing field: two spear-ponies and an officer-looking piece with a sabre.
She drew three cards out of the set in her box and, after a moment to examine them, lay one face-up in front of her; setting the others aside for later. “’Discipline’” she read, “’Plus one to any one positive attribute for any unit within two spaces of a higher ranking unit.’ Nice!”
Next up was Auburn, who took her time deciding which pieces to front first, finally settling on an impressive looking pegasus stallion; both built and armoured heavily, with the Pegasus Clan banner in his hoof held proudly aloft. This was the only unit she put down, which drew an appreciative whistle from her sister.
“Tartarus, sis; you’re bringing out Hurricane this early? I don’t know whether that’s genius or just plain stupid… Guess we’ll see soon enough either way.”
Commander Hurricane; leader of the Pegasus Clan and a notoriously formidable warrior. Diamond guessed that this unit would be one to be wary of, especially since her friend hadn’t put any other units into play; which suggested that either she felt she didn’t need to, or Hurricane was a unit worth as much as all three of Dinky’s. Whichever was the truth, Auburn would be one to watch.
Auburn drew her cards and frowned at them: clearly disappointed, she put them to one side and looked at Diamond instead; waiting for something.
“Your turn, Diamond.” Prompted Copperwing, and Diamond looked blankly at the figurines in her box, trying to find one which looked like it would be a safe bet. Confusion overwhelmed her and she turned to Copperwing, hoping that her helpfulness earlier would still be present here.
The pegasus smiled at her soothingly. “You just have to pick a few units whose tier numbers add up to four. It doesn’t really matter too much what you pick this early on, just choose whichever ones you feel like, okay?”
Diamond glanced down at her units: each had a small number printed on their stand, along with their unit name, and she assumed this stood for their tier. In that case, half her units – various types of ‘Drone’ – were tier one, the more unique changelings in the next section of her box were tier two, with the vast majority of the last quarter being tier three, and the imposing Queen being an obvious tier four.
She settled on four tier one changelings: one of each different sub-class of drone – Shock, Empath, Hunter and Conduit – for variety’s sake and, despite the lack of any real threat, positioned them in a rough horseshoe shape to cover all sides from attack.
Copperwing hummed in interest, before verbally nudging Diamond towards the completion of her turn. “Playing it safe, I see – good idea. You can draw three cards from your box, and play as many or as few as you want, and that’s the end of the turn.”
“Okay…” replied Diamond, and she scooped up some cards in her hoof: they seemed useful enough, but not anything she’d really need right now. As Auburn had done before her, she too set her cards aside for use at a later date.
Needing nopony to tell her that her turn had come, Copperwing placed a tier-three-looking unicorn – a warmage, if Diamond remembered her history lessons right – on the field along with what she knew had to be a tier one – not that anypony could have mistaken such a generic unit as anything else. The pegasus drew her cards and played all three – actually placing them face down upon the battle-scape – with deliberate care.
Noticing Diamond’s confused expression, Dinky explained: “Effect cards – you play them on the field and choose when to activate them. They usually have some sort of area-of-effect ability, though not always.”
It was Dinky’s turn again, and Diamond watched carefully as she moved her spearponies out, stopping just short of where ‘Discipline’ would stop working. Her other unit, which Diamond decided was probably a sergeant of some sort, remained in place. Completing the turn, Dinky put her cards to one side: her eyes gleaming at the possibilities gained from whatever cards she’d bagged.
Diamond pulled the little booklet out from under her figurines so she could read it between the turns, before returning her attention to the game as Auburn’s turn began.
It struck Diamond as odd that Auburn didn’t put any more units down, until she remembered what she had said about placing units. If she’d understood her right, Auburn wouldn’t be able to put any more units down for another three turns. The spark of an idea flickered in Diamond’s mind at this realisation; lighting the kindling of a plan which began smouldering away of its own accord.
Auburn did not move Hurricane at all – Diamond guessed she was probably wary of leaving him open to attack – which left her nothing to do but draw more cards and end her turn. All three cards went onto her little stockpile, which would become quite the hoard if she kept on doing this.
It was Diamond’s turn now, and she was in two minds about what to do. On the one hoof, she could spread her troops out and try and claim more land for herself, but on the other hoof there was the plan which was slowly solidifying in her mind. In the end, she settled for a compromise: she spread her units out as if to claim more land, but mostly in the direction of Auburn’s quarter, and sat back in her chair to draw her three cards.
The cards she got this time were all interesting, but one in particular caught her eye as something immediately relevant: an effect card titled ‘Aether Well’. Its particular ability was to immediately double the energy count of any of her units within two spaces, at the price of a ten-turn energy drain for anything within that same radius once the card’s effect wore off. She put it down near a section of high ground which was closer to Auburn than her, her mind galloping at a thousand miles an hour as the ethereal fragments of her plan all came together at once – this just might work!
*
As the game continued, Diamond paid little attention to Copperwing’s movements, instead rereading the unit descriptions to make sure she was right in her assumptions. The Shock and Hunter drones, as she had thought, were two fairly similar combat units – the former the more physically powerful and the latter faster and nimbler – which should complement each other well enough.
Diamond glanced up at the game in progress: Copperwing had moved her own Warmage over towards her own high ground – away from Diamond – and left her Corporal standing idly where she’d first brought her in. All was good; Diamond returned to her paranoid double-checking.
It was the Empath and Conduit drones she’d been concerned with, and she sighed with relief as a thorough rereading of their respective passages in the hoofbook confirmed that her plan was possible. It was also risky, near-suicidal and reckless; but if she pulled it off she might just have a chance at evening the odds.
Copperwing was drawing her cards, but Diamond ignored her and read through the unit descriptions one last time instead: she couldn’t afford to lose her whole force because she hadn’t read these vital sentences properly.
Her Empath was immune to the disadvantage imbued upon all her other units; meaning it could perfectly copy the forms of enemy units first time: this would cost all its energy, but if the plan worked that wouldn’t matter. And the conduit, whilst near useless in combat, could link units within a certain radius – a link through which knowledge could be transmitted; which in the case of the plan meant how to perfectly imitate enemy units.
“Field Promotion, hay yes!” said Copperwing, snapping Diamond out of her stupor.
“What did you say?” she asked, confused.
“’Field Promotion’ – it’s my card. I can upgrade any unit below Tier Three so that it fights as a unit the tier above. Kiss your advantages goodbye, Diamond and Auburn, ‘cause my forces are more powerful than either of yours. This little Corporal? - Well, she’s a Sergeant now, and I’ve got a Tier Five army. Bring it on!”
Dinky was too happy-go-lucky to rise to the boast, and Diamond didn’t care all that much – it wouldn’t affect the plan, and that’s all that mattered right now – but Auburn wasted no time in starting a good old siblings’ argument.
“Brag all you like, sis, but you’ve still only got two units and Hurricane could take either of them before you the other even got close. Might want to close that gap, or your Tier Five army could become a Tier Two moving target.”
Copperwing laughed and sent a smirk the way of her younger sibling. “I’d like to see you try, Auburn - that one unit’s a really intimidating sight... I’m just quaking in my boots here: Auburn Wake and her one stallion army – why, whatever can I do against such an enormous force?!”
“Go buck yourself, Copper…” huffed Auburn, turning back to stare wistfully into her own unit box and then glaring furiously at her one and only unit for not having somehow multiplied whilst her gaze had been on other things.
Dinky’s turn again: the unicorn tapped her hoof to make her indecision audible as she made a few faltering half-moves in various directions. Sighing, she finally settled on shifting her whole force a mere space forwards and groaned in frustration as her cards turned out to be as absolutely devoid of opportunities as the everything else that turn.
Diamond found herself unconsciously holding her breath as Auburn thought of where to move her unit, praying to Celestia, Luna and Twilight that she wouldn’t send him towards Copperwing’s units. Unsurprisingly, when her friend took the bait Diamond had laid down and moved Hurricane towards the high ground on which she’d placed the card, it took her a lot of effort not to cry out with glee – everything was going according to plan!
“You know, Diamond,” Auburn laughed good-naturedly, “you really need to be more subtle than that if you want to do well in this game. Putting an effect card down on one of my strategic spots… well, that’s as far from subtle as you can get.”
She’d bought it! For the second time in so many seconds, Diamond had to force down her uprising emotions and feign dismay.
“Damn it… I guess I’ll have to take you out head-on, then.” Diamond said, trying to coax out the competitive side of Auburn she’d seen when Copperwing had been bragging.
“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” grinned her friend, and inwardly Diamond mirrored her in gleeful satisfaction – one did not spend three years around somepony like Silver Spoon without learning a thing or two about manipulating ponies. Now came the risky part: getting her units over to Auburn’s hero without Dinky or Copperwing intercepting them, and within range of her Aether Well before Hurricane got past it and into her land.
Auburn added three more cards to her stockpile, and Diamond frowned: what was she doing? Shaking her head, Diamond sent her own units towards the high ground; the Empath in the lead, followed by her Conduit and then by her two different combat drones. Her cards gave her another saving grace: ‘Stormy Weather’ and ‘Endurance’ would work wonders against Auburn, and she played them immediately.
“Hey, Auburn, guess what? There’s a storm coming…” she held the card triumphantly out for her friend to see. “Halved endurance for any unit when using flight-type movement, so no more super-speed Hurricane for you. I’ve got Endurance, too, so my units move faster than yours – still feeling so confident?”
“Oh, it is on, Diamond… It. Is. On!” Auburn seemed to be taking it in her stride, which was a good thing – her advantage would be no use if Auburn ran away, after all.
Copperwing had watched all this mirthfully, amusement written on her features, and decided for the moment to leave the squabbling duo to their skirmish; moving her units instead towards her own strategic points with the intention of safeguarding her corner of the world from everypony else.
“This’ll be entertaining…” commented Dinky, and Copperwing laughed by way of agreement, taking her cards from the pile as she did so.
“True, true…” she said, her face breaking into a grin as she saw what she’d got. “Oh, cool!”
Dinky turned, eyebrow raised. “What’ve you got?”
“Sceptre of Power: I can keep any spell going indefinitely so long as I don’t move the unit casting it.”
Dinky didn’t seem bothered by this development, congratulating Copperwing despite the other filly’s close proximity to her own territory. “Nice! You going to use your shield charm?”
“Yeah, I… how the Tartarus did you know I was going to do that?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson: you’re sending your warmage to a central, defensive location rather than somewhere on your borders, and you’ve just gotten the card which would make that strategy feasible with so few units.”
She said all of this with a great big grin plastered on her face, and Copperwing’s own expression grew increasingly unnerved. “You’re really quite scary sometimes, you know that? Brilliant… but scary.”
“You’re welcome!” chirped Dinky, and she proceeded to draw her cards and end her turn without even bothering to move a single unit. She lay two of the cards down as if by random and put the third with her slowly growing pile of spares, ending her turn with a satisfied smile.
“You’re not even going to move? That doesn’t seem – Oh, wait, I see what you’re doing… you’re saving up your energy for later, aren’t you?”
It was Dinky’s turn to double-take now. “How- ?”
“'Elementary',” replied Copperwing, mockingly imitating Dinky’s terrible impression of the great detective. The pair stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.
By the time their laughter died down, Auburn’s turn was already almost over and all that remained for Copperwing’s sister to do was draw her cards and predictably add them to her hoard.
Diamond likewise needed little time to decide what to do: all her actions would be steps of the plan, which she had memorised to the letter; so she guided her units still closer to their eventual goal and drew her cards enveloped in an atmosphere of confident purpose. She, like her adversary, placed all three cards upon her pile of unused items and sat back to glare at the other filly.
Copperwing, breaking off her conversation with Dinky, moved her Warmage the final few spaces to her central high ground and broke out the Sceptre of Power, smirking smugly as she announced her territory’s indefinite protection.
“Sceptre of Power, fillies, Sceptre of Power... Infinite shield spell, here we come!”
“Not if I have anything to do with it…” grumbled Auburn, turning her competitive glare from Diamond to her sister, whose smug grin merely widened. Dinky and Diamond’s eyes met over the table and they shook their heads in mutual exasperated amusement.
“How are things doing over there, Dinky?” asked Diamond, realising that they’d barely spoken since their arrival at Auburn’s house.
“Great! Well, I can’t really do much until I get more units or somepony else does something, but it’s not a bad position to be in early game. Besides, I’ve got more than enough entertainment from you and Auburn – I have to ask, though, do you really think you can win?”
Diamond felt uncertainty bubble up at this question, but crushed it with the facts that backed up her plan and forced a confident smile onto her face.
“Wouldn’t be trying if I didn’t think it would work, Dinky. That said, I wasn’t expecting Auburn to be this competitive – she seemed really chill up ‘til now.”
Dinky shrugged in response. “I don’t know either. She’s never like this except when she’s playing the game, so I guess maybe it’s a pride thing? After all, she has been playing this longer than any of us – even Copperwing hadn’t played it before Auburn brought her first set home and insisted she play it with her.”
Copperwing had scattered two more effect cards across her land whilst they’d been talking, and Dinky turned away from Diamond to concentrate on her own turn: disappointed that the conversation had ended so abruptly, Diamond tried to start another with Auburn’s elder sister.
“Hey, Copperwing, what school do you go to? I don’t really know any schools besides mine, but there must be another nearby because we’re all in our last year at Ponyville Elementary and Auburn’s younger than you.”
The older filly glanced up through her pendent mane in surprise, her face softening in a warm smile as she sat up to talk with Diamond. Happily; whilst she shared her sister’s quiet tendencies and – as her comment to Gild had shown – a decidedly teenage sense of bad attitude; she did not seem to mind Diamond interrupting her train of thought.
“I go to Canterhoof General Academy, it’s about ten minutes away on the train.” Noticing Diamond’s expression, she explained further. “Yeah, I take the train – school’s in Witherston, so it’d be a bit of a trek if you had to hoof it there. There’s a school carriage, too, but I don’t really like to be that crammed in with the other foals… and besides, the driver’s taste in music is awful.”
“What, is it all classical music and stuff like that?”
“Nope, just the same pop music you hear every Celestia-damned place you go these days. Not that I’m some hipster type who hates it just because it’s popular, it’s just that songs tend to get irritating when you hear the same chorus the thousandth time.”
Diamond sighed in relief internally – classical music was a bit of a guilty pleasure of hers – and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I know what you mean. What sort of music are you into, then?”
Dinky’s turn had passed unnoticed, and Copperwing blinked in surprise at the sight of her sister preparing to take her turn before shrugging and replying to her new acquaintance in the hopes that they, too, could become friends.
“I’m not really that fussy about genres – so long as the songs are good, who really cares if it’s jazz or electronica. If I had to choose one, though, it would have to be rock music – there are so many little genres and niches inside that term: you could spend forever listening to just rock music and still have more surprises on the horizon, you know?”
“Yeah,” agreed Diamond, almost disappointed that her turn had come because its arrival meant she’d have to stop talking and concentrate.
*
Dinky had played a card called ‘Conscription’ while she and Copperwing had been talking about the latter’s school and now possessed a third Spearpony, which she had summoned via the card. Despite this, she was furthest from Diamond and still looked to be building up her energy stores, which meant she was still a minor threat compared with Auburn.
On the subject of the dun pegasus, she’d finally gotten Commander Hurricane over to the high ground, where it now stood – at a safe distance, Diamond noticed, from her face-down Aether Well – waiting for her own imminent arrival.
It was turn five, which meant that Diamond needed to carry out her plan in its entirety – now – or her friend would be able to bring in another four tiers’ worth of units and crush her little army. Panic pumped her heart harder and harder in her chest, taking thirty seconds of concentrated breathing exercises to alleviate and breaking her calm demeanour.
Autumn placed three more cards on her pile, sat back and watched in amusement as Diamond hurriedly reread the hoofbook in a panic-driven paranoia fit.
‘It’s all there in the book, Diamond. You can do this; this can work – this will work!’
Mental pep-talk over, Diamond moved her pieces to their final positions: her Empath within striking distance of Commander Hurricane’s spear, her Hunter and Shock drones as close as she could get them – still too far away for them to strike the enemy unit – and, finally, her Conduit drone standing right on top of her Aether Well.
“What the Discord are you doing?” asked Copperwing, incredulous that Diamond would be this foalish with her unit placement. “Your combat drones are too far away to attack, Diamond, and Auburn will tear your Empath a new one when it’s her turn!”
“I know that… but I’m not done yet... I activate my Aether Well – double energy for my Empath and Conduit drones – which gives me eight energy for my Empath and six for my Conduit.
“The Empath’s special move is that it can perfectly copy the form of any enemy unit at an energy cost double the enemy’s tier number. I have eight energy, so I can perfectly replicate Commander Hurricane-“
Copperwing interrupted her, face caught halfway between fear for Diamond, and awe at the plan she was beginning to piece together herself. “Oh, Celestia, if you’re doing what I think you’re doing…” She laughed, shaking her head.
“What the hay is she doing, Copper?!” growled Auburn, “What’s she going to do?”
Dinky was shaking her head. “I have no idea, but this is going to be interesting, for sure.”
“If you’d let me finish…” said Diamond, pointedly. “I can perfectly copy Hurricane, and my Conduit can – using the energy from the Aether Well – spend 3 energy sending that information to each of my combat drones. They’re behind because I wanted to save their energy for the transformation – it’d cost four energy to become a tier four and since they’ve got five, I can do that easily. Behold my mighty army of two Commander Hurricanes:” Diamond gestured to her former Shock and Hunter drones with a malicious grin on her face.
Realisation dawned on Auburn, and her face contorted into an expression of shock and outrage.
“You… You didn’t just… oh, BUCK! – I don’t know how you figured all this out, but you’ve bucking got me!”
Dinky leaned over the table, laying a reassuring hoof on Auburn’s shoulder in an attempt to raise her spirits. “Hey - you can still get out of this. One energy isn’t enough to get over to you, and you’ll get more units after Copperwing’s turn ends.”
She was only trying to be helpful, but Auburn just shook her head in dismay. “You don’t understand – Hurricane can turn unused cards into energy, and his special attack lets him attack any unit within five tiles of himself at a cost four energy. She’s got nine cards, Dinky – I’m finished.”
Dinky’s smile fell as the understanding struck her, leaving her mouth agape like a goldfish. “Well, plump my rump with cake and call me Celestia,” she exclaimed in awe.
Feeling no need for any further explanation of her intended course of action, Diamond took a Hurricane in each hoof and placed them either side of the original, plucking Auburn’s one and only unit off the playing field and ending Auburn’s game five turns in.
Wordlessly; her mouth curved momentarily in a wry smile as she ruefully shook her head; Auburn passed over her stockpile of cards and slumped back in her seat. Diamond gave her an apologetic look before responding to Copperwing’s congratulatory smile with a triumphant hoof-pump and a grin.
Also grinning, Dinky offered her hoof and Diamond slapped hers against it; overjoyed that she’d done so well on her first game and enjoying the moment immensely. This was fun!
The celebration of the new filly’s victory went on for several minutes, with Auburn joining in with equal enthusiasm once the shock wore off.
“I’m impressed, Diamond,” she said, shaking Diamond’s hoof. “Not often I lose when I hero rush, but you won fair and square. I knew I should’ve smashed your combat drones when I had the chance, but I didn’t want to waste my cards – now I’ve lost them all!”
Diamond grinned back at her, a smile which only widened as she looked around at her new friends: she’d only known them a day, but she felt like she’d been with these three all her life.
‘So this is what friendship is like: no back-stabbing, no bullying, just some ponies having fun together’ she thought, her happy expression darkening as Silver Spoon trotted, unwelcome, back into her mind. ‘And if it wasn’t for you, you bucking psychopath, I’d have found all this three years ago.’
“Diamond, are you alright?” Reopening her eyes, she looked into Copperwing’s concerned green discs and, buoyed up by her returning good spirits, grinned from ear to ear.
“Oh… uh, yeah, I’m fine… I was just thinking, is all.”
“What about? You looked kinda sad for a moment there.”
“Nothing; just a bad memory. It doesn’t matter, not after today… I just wanted to say thanks – to all of you – today has been… well, to be honest it’s been the best day I’ve ever had.”
Her friends’ faces lit up as she said this, and as they pulled her into a group hug she felt like she could take on the world. Tomorrow’s assembly would be no problem at all – for the first time in years she had real friends, and that’s all that really mattered. She didn’t need a school full of friends, just a school of ponies who knew the truth: after the summer it would be a new school – a new start – and with her new friends by her side the future could hardly be any brighter.
Diamond grinned into Copperwing’s mane: life was good.
*****
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I feel like I've just watched a six hour Magic The Gathering tournament. What's my name again?
5178114
I'm just going to take that as a compliment: since I've never actually played something like this, if it reminds you of Magic: The Gathering I must be doing something right. 
Dice is the plural and die is the singular, don't feel bad a lot of people make this mistake. So instead it should either "scooped up the die and rolled it" or "scooped up the dice and rolled them" if you decide on the change to plural you'll have to state the number of dice. Now that we have that out of the way, you had them play a pony version of Risk I think that's kind of cool. Maybe you could have them making a go at making an RPG in a later chapter, have Diamond state she was wondering what would happen if you just played one of the lower tier units and spent time pumping them up some way or something like that. Sorry it's just that this got me thinking of how D&D got started, and the original D&D really did start with a similar question to that I thought Diamond might give. Feel free to do with that what you want
5178268 Thanks for the pointers, I'll make sure to fix that error later - I thought I'd found everything, but I'm not surprised something slipped by in a chapter this big.
As for the RPG-like ideas you have, I was going to include RPG elements in the game but didn't have the time. We've only seen the first five turns of a game which can last days, though, so there's plenty of room to add more elements later.
One idea I had was that since they're going to run out of units to bring into play eventually, I could make that a transition to a new stage of the game. The main idea being that if these are the only units they have, they're all a lot more precious to the player - couple this with the ability to improve units over time and there's going to be a shift in how they play, even if the main goals and rules are the same.
Don't worry, this is not the full extent of the game by any means, and if you have any ideas I'd love to hear them!
5178341 That still makes it a strategy game of sorts, the way you've set it up and described is similar to Strategy games like Risk. RPG stands for Role Playing Game and in that style of game you usually play a single character and have them take on a role, some RPGs or players of RPGs will play with more than one character. An RPG that plays with the multiple character concept a bit, but suffers from source material inconsistencies and poor execution, is Fireborn, in that game you play a reincarnated dragon and the GM (Game Master) can set things up so that you play through your character's dragon past(s) (the game does offer a wonderful assortment of choices in character creation, but as I said before it also suffers from inconsistencies and poor execution that is mostly outside character creation). An RPG that shows what happens with good execution and immense creation options is GURPS, in a phrase it is the Uber game because nothing is out of reach for you. Another game that gives you plenty of options is White Wolf publishing's World of Darkness series, both it and GURPs run on a point buy system (in other words you start with X number of points for character creation and earn more points as you play through the game). Dungeons and Dragons (better known as D&D or DnD) and Pathfinder (which was initially a spin-off game from edition 3.5 of Dnd) work on a leveling class system (that means you choose a class and when you reach X number of experience points you're at a new level and have access to new abilities, feats and skills). With a point buy system you don't have levels or classes (at least in the experience I've had with such games) and you can spend your points at anytime on whatever your want, provided you have enough points to buy up what you want. I will admit that RPGs and Strategy board games share similar elements, but that's because the first RPGs were a born from strategy board games (the medieval strategy board game Chainmail was actually a parent of D&D (the oldest known RPG to date) as D&D creators Earnest Gary Gygax and Dave Anerson played Chainmail and got into a discussion about what it would be like to only be in command of a singular unit from the start of the game and what kind of challenges would such a game concept present for the character being played.
5178616 Thanks for the extra clarification, I'll keep that in mind. I will admit I've never played an RPG tabletop game myself, so my knowledge of what is and what isn't an RPG is somewhat lacking. I will say now that the heart of this is probably going to remain fairly like strategy games (the initial concept of this was essentially a beefed up version of chess, after all) but introducing more RPG elements later on would do a lot to keep things interesting.
I don't think I explained my idea very well, either. I didn't want to overload you with information, so I kept a lot of the detail back, but I can see a lot of what I meant wasn't obvious.
So, my idea was that after all the little battles they'll have had by that time, each player would probably only have 5-10 units left. Any one of them can be chosen by the player to their (for want of a better term) hero, with the rest forming more of a grunt military force.
The heroes are given a suitably fantasy-style name, a class and a background, and serve as the main character of each player.
Players now play the game as their player character would, leveling up on the enemy grunt force and going on quests. To control their other units, the player either needs to be close to them, or send a message via other means, so a lot more of what happens is tied into their own actions as their hero.
The quests would be chosen by a non-player games-master of sorts, which in this game would probably be Auburn since she's already out of the game. The games-master would also be the judge of whether players are acting how their character should, and would challenge them if their actions don't make sense (i.e. if a player using a magician class suddenly decided they're going to fight the enemy in battle armour with a spear)
Additionally, the games-master can bring in units from the factions which aren't being played to divert attention from the end goal of the game, and similarly can bring in and control NPCs for quests.
That still sounds really convoluted, and there are some other details I've kept out, but it's probably the best explanation I can give without actually writing Diamond and Co. playing it.
Oh, and by the way, that dislike on your comment wasn't me, I upvoted it.
5180480 Well it's still in the process of developing, so I'm looking forward to where it goes. The way you described it a moment ago sounds interesting. Since Diamond's new to it all she could ask a question along the lines of "what if we played the game as a low tier hero unit from start to finish and they made their way up to being the equivalent of a higher tier?" Since you've written Tiara as a tactical mind, that seems to like challenges, then that kind of question would be her trying find a way to make the game more challenging. And over time they could all be refining the new version of the game to point it's become an entirely new sort of game and they are all in a sort of council with each other on what to call the new game, and along the way they start writing up new rules for the variant they're working with. Maybe they also start adding more factions that aren't in what they have (first by purchasing the supplements they don't have readily at their disposal or asking somepony good at crafting metal or wood to make the figures for new factions they've devised for the the improved game. Maybe even expanding on the existing lore while simultaneously writing up new lore. There are a lot of ways this could go. I just offered up a way it could go from a tabletop strategy game with RPG elements to a full blown RPG, granted it was pretty basic summary of how that could go from a single question. You can do with it as you want, but just remember you put in something that can be expanded on here. Heck you could even make their little side project a spin-off story that happens in the main story, but arranged so that it doesn't interrupt the flow of the main story. You already have a nice set of "base races" to start with (the earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, griffons, and changelings; heck you with the changelings and possibly griffons you've even made for the possibility of sub-races).
For a better understanding of tabletop RPGs I suggest finding some friends and sitting down to play one. D&D is a long runner, Pathfinder is a more balanced D&D (for now anyway, D&D 5th edition is just around the corner; also you can get a pony variant for Pathfinder, just search for Ponyfinder online and you should be good there), GURPS could potentially make you lose track of something while in the process of character creation, Mouse Guard is good one for beginners in my opinion, World of Darkness has a bunch of variants and might prove interesting for you (World of Darkness, Changeling, Geist, Hunter, Werewolf, Promethean, and MAGE are the variants I'm most aware of), Feng Shui might prove interesting to you. PM me if you want to know a bit more about them and I'll tell you all I can.
5180606 Yeah, I've been debating whether to keep the development as a progression of the base game or as Diamond and Co.'s own spin-off, and I think it might work better if, like you said, they started adding their own elements to it after a question gets their minds going. Anyhow, it'll be a little while before the game comes back to the forefront, so I've got time to make up my mind.
Hmm, I can't think of anypony I've introduced who could do that. Definitely not a certain filly's father whose occupation got mentioned briefly last chapter, that would be silly.
In all seriousness, though, Auburn's dad would be perfect for this - and Filthy Rich could certainly finance a few figurines now that his business isn't collapsing. I'd never have thought of that, so thanks for the input once again.
5180633 Glad to help.
Yeah, Diamond totally acted like Sora from No Game No Life this chapter. I had NO clue what her plan was until she explained it at the end.
Maybe you should change it to "odds for gryphons, even for changelings" or change the 4 into a three to better match what she says, don't feel too bad this my fifth read through and I just noticed it.
quick note for those out there reading and confused by this. The figurines are most likely made from pewter, which is a dull grey metal that is cheap to produce. Random side note, pewter is an alloy that is tin with a bit of copper mixed in (it's inverse being bronze which is copper with a bit of tin mixed in).
5319550 Never mind, I missed the part about 5 being the deciding factor.