Complete Cyvasse Rules

[Dabhrak]

Regarding the number 5 it should be tested like you said and if it solves some of the issues it definitely could work. After all, you came up with the number 7 because it is important in ASOIAF's world; but it's only important in Westeros where the Faith of the Seven is heavily in place whereas this particular number bears no specific symbolism in Essos (and the game is played there nonetheless). So we probably could get rid of that particular number if it benefits the game.

PS: Don't have a lot of time tonight but I'll elaborate on your other remarks as soon as possible.

PPS : Bgona, I'm sorry I don't understand your challenge, could you give a little more details please ?

[bgona]

Hi! I have read a little and it is quite impressive that you came out with cyvasse rules.

I believe that you must know play chess and I was wondering if ASOIAF plot can be related to chess. I believe that yes, cause I have found similarities with a pawn race that it is teached to children to learn how to move the counters.

So here is a challenge for all of you: to be able to found a chess or cyvasse game (it can be also chaturanga game).

If you find this completely out of topic or irrealistic please tell me. Just to know it. I hope that you can have fun with this challenge.

[MikeL]

Agreed about play testing 5 of everything, but when I look at the six a side board screenshot that LB put up to show how crowded it is, and imagine it with 8 fewer pieces, I think it could work.

I've been going back and forth on LBs idea about only having tier 2 pieces spawn terrain - I like the strategic aspect of it - but then it will mean we only have 5 terrain tiles (aside from mountains) on each half of the board, and only 1 of the terrain for the piece you chose one of. It doesn't seem enough to me. Also, I'm not sure if that was the first time I suggested having the fortress spawn wherever you put the king, but it seems that that would be the appropriate "terrain" for the king.

[MikeL]

Also, well done Dabhrak for reading the entire thread. It ain't getting any smaller :)

[MikeL]

Hi! I have read a little and it is quite impressive that you came out with cyvasse rules.

I believe that you must know play chess and I was wondering if ASOIAF plot can be related to chess. I believe that yes, cause I have found similarities with a pawn race that it is teached to children to learn how to move the counters.

So here is a challenge for all of you: to be able to found a chess or cyvasse game (it can be also chaturanga game).

If you find this completely out of topic or irrealistic please tell me. Just to know it. I hope that you can have fun with this challenge.

Hi Bgona, I thought Chaturanga was a yoga pose? :)

I'm not sure if I understand you completely, but yes, we are trying to make a game of Cyvasse that works. I went on a camp recently where I played quite a lot of chess (5 games in two days is a lot for me) and was really reminded why Chess is such a great game. Just for fun in one game I tried attacking relentlessly like I used to do as a child, and my friend was good enough that he repelled them all, I ended up resigning once I got down to a king, a knight and two pawns (he still had most of his pawns, a knight, two rooks and a bishop - it was hopeless for me). In another game I moved my pawns slowly and systematically so my friend (who was attacking) broke his forces on my pawn line and I ended up overwhelming him. All the powers of the pieces are beautifully balanced, and that is what we are trying to do with Cyvasse.

At the moment it's actually shaping up to be quite nicely symmetrical:

The dragon is the most powerful.

Tier 3 pieces are the most mobile.

Tier 2 pieces have an initial terrain advantage.

The Rabble have numbers.

The King has a fortress.

[MikeL]

It's been a while since I've reposted the rule set document, and there have been a fair few changes since I last did (version 1.4, post #139 on page 7). Rules version 1.5 I haven't bothered to write out separately - but that would include the changes to flanking rules (simple +1 bonus for flankers of the same weapon/tier level, and the ability to place your dragon near the fortress midway through the game).

What I'm doing here is posting the rules as I understand them now so we are all talking about the same thing. I'm going to include the terrain rules as we've discussed them so far, the move back to six hexes a side, and 5 as the magic number - that's a pretty big change so this is version 2.0. Let me know if you think it has gotten too complicated - I'm starting to wonder.

Welcome to Cyvasse

By Lord Biscuit and MikeL

Iconography by Rhaenys Targaryen

(Rules 2.0, last edit: MikeL)

Want to experience the game played by Lannisters and Targaryens, Pentoshi and Dornishmen alike? Here's our take on Cyvasse, the board game from A Song of Ice and Fire. Set up your spaces behind the curtain at the beginning, then plot to ruin your opponent's fortress and capture their king! With a hex board and new flanking rules to make things interesting, Cyvasse is like Chess, Blitzkrieg, and Stratego, but unlike anything you've ever played before.

Movement

One of George R.R. Martin's inspirations for Cyvasse is Blitzkreig: a 1965 military strategy game, based on a hexagonal board with "squares" (actually hexes). We have followed through on this concept to create a hex board with 6 spaces to a side, and these spaces alternate through three colors in a checkered pattern. This means the movements of our pieces are most comparable to hex chess.

The pieces

1) Mountain: Stationary (blocks movement of all other pieces except Trebuchet and Dragon).

2) Rabble: One space orthogonally (orthogonal means moving in the direction of the adjoining 6 hexes).

3) King: One space orthogonally.

4) Light Horse: Two spaces diagonally (diagonal means moving in the direction of spaces of the same colour).

5) Spears: Three spaces orthogonally.

6) Crossbows: Range of two spaces, or three when capturing (range means moving anywhere that two or three adjoining spaces can take you - this piece can jump other pieces).

7) Heavy Horse: Diagonally until stopped.

8) Elephants: Orthogonally until stopped.

9) Trebuchet: Range of two spaces, or three when capturing (can jump other pieces/mountains).

10) Dragon: Range of four spaces (This piece can fly over mountains, but not other pieces).

Once the gameplay starts, click on each piece to see where it can move and which other pieces it can take. Click on a space to complete the move.

Tier levels, Terrain tiles, and the Rock Paper Scissors system

Mountains (x5) are stationary, non-combative pieces and do not have a tier level. Every other piece is grouped into one of four tier levels.

Tier levels and numbers of each piece are:

Tier 1) Rabble (x5) and King (x1).

Tier 2) Spears (1 or 2), Crossbows (1 or 2) and Light Horse (1 or 2). Each player starts with a total of 5 tier 2 pieces.

Tier 3) Elephant (1 or 2), Trebuchet (1 or 2) and Heavy Horse (1 or 2). Each player starts with a total of 5 tier 3 pieces.

Tier 4) Dragon (x1).

As you might expect, each piece can take any other piece of equal or lower tier ranking. In addition to this, there are attacking and defending bonuses in some situations. Rather than try to remember lots of combinations between all 10 pieces, we have created a simple system to decide which pieces can capture which other pieces, based on the game Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Rock pieces: Elephant (tier 3) is an improved Spears unit (tier 2). Forest is home terrain, no entry to Hill and Mountain tiles.

Paper pieces: Trebuchet (tier 3) is an improved Crossbows unit (tier 2). Hill is home terrain, no entry to Water and Mountain tiles.

Scissors pieces: Heavy Horse (tier 3) is an improved Light Horse unit (tier 2). Water is home terrain, no entry to Forest and Mountain tiles.

During set up, the location of pieces, mountains, and terrain features like the fortress, and three terrain types (water, forest and hill) are decided by the player while hidden behind a "curtain" which is removed at the beginning of gameplay. Mountains can be placed in any location on the player's side of the curtain. The placement of the King automatically places the fortress tile, and the placement of Tier 2 pieces automatically places home terrain tiles as appropriate: Placing a Spears unit creates a forest tile, placing a Crossbows unit creates a hill tile, and placing a Light Horse unit creates a water tile. The placement of terrain will play a critical role for the remainder of the game, so think carefully at this stage!

The dragon is unlike other pieces in that it is not placed on the board during setup, but can be placed on the board as a separate turn at any time during the game. In the program, the player presses the "place dragon" button and is then allowed to place the dragon anywhere within one move (4 spaces) of their home fortress, including inside the fortress if it is not occupied by a friendly piece. The dragon is allowed to capture enemy pieces on this move.

Capturing, Terrain & Flanking bonuses

The rock paper scissors system determines (for tier 2 and tier 3 pieces) which pieces can capture other pieces. Rabble, King and dragon pieces are not affected by this. What it means is that rock pieces (Spears, Elephant), have a +1 when attacking scissors pieces (Light Horse, Heavy Horse), paper pieces (Crossbows, Trebuchets) have a +1 when attacking rock pieces (Spears, Elephant), and scissors pieces (Light Horse, Heavy Horse) get a +1 improvement to their tier level when attacking paper pieces (Crossbows, Trebuchets). Likewise, there is a -1 penalty for attacking a target piece which has the appropriate counter ability.

There is a +1 defensive bonus to a piece's tier level when it occupies a fortress or its home terrain. A piece also gets a +1 bonus when it attacks from its home terrain.

Lastly, there is also a +1 improvement to a piece's tier level for each flanking piece it has in attack. To qualify as a flanking piece, this piece must 1) also be able to move into the space occupied by the target piece, and 2) be either of the same tier level as the attacking piece, have the same rock, scissors, paper power as the attacking piece, or be the king of the attacking piece. The king is special in being able to serve as a flanking bonus for all other pieces. By contrast, the dragon does not act as a flanking piece for any other piece.

Promotions, Ruined Fortresses, and Capturing the King

The fortress can be used to promote any piece to the next tier level if that next tier level has less than its full complement of pieces: Any tier 3 piece in the fortress is promoted to king if the king has been captured, any tier 2 piece is promoted to its corresponding tier 3 piece if the number of tier 3 pieces is less than 5, and any rabble is promoted to a tier 2 piece if the number of tier 2 pieces is less than 5. Only one promotion can occur per turn - this happens automatically when a piece is in the fortress and does not prevent the player from also making a move on that turn.

To ruin a fortress, a player must capture the enemy fortress and hold it until the beginning of their next turn. That means the other player must retake their fortress on the very next move if they wish to avoid it being ruined. If the fortress does become ruined, that player is no longer able to promote any of their pieces, and their king becomes irreplacable.

The aim of the game is to capture the enemy king, whilst your own king remains uncaptured. If the enemy king is captured after their fortress has been ruined, the king cannot be replaced and this ends the game. If the enemy king is captured before their fortress has been ruined, that player must replace the king by promoting a tier 3 piece on their very next turn, or else this also ends the game.

May the best cyvasse player win!

Acknowledgements

Credit to Zuberi who started the ASOIAF thread and came up with the initial ideas on which this game was developed, Rhaenys Targaryen for the iconography, and also the people who suggested ideas along the way. Thank you and enjoy!

-----

PS: I made a table of all the attack/defense possibilities - http://i46.tinypic.com/b9hq1k.jpg[/img] - it turns out that a defending piece cannot have an effective tier level higher than 5, so it is possible to do it in your head - I just wonder if it's too much.

[bgona]

PPS : Bgona, I'm sorry I don't understand your challenge, could you give a little more details please ?

To find if there is a playing structure inside of the books (a chess game, a cyvasse game or a chaturanga game).

Hi Bgona, I thought Chaturanga was a yoga pose? :)

I'm not sure if I understand you completely, but yes, we are trying to make a game of Cyvasse that works. I went on a camp recently where I played quite a lot of chess (5 games in two days is a lot for me) and was really reminded why Chess is such a great game. Just for fun in one game I tried attacking relentlessly like I used to do as a child, and my friend was good enough that he repelled them all, I ended up resigning once I got down to a king, a knight and two pawns (he still had most of his pawns, a knight, two rooks and a bishop - it was hopeless for me). In another game I moved my pawns slowly and systematically so my friend (who was attacking) broke his forces on my pawn line and I ended up overwhelming him. All the powers of the pieces are beautifully balanced, and that is what we are trying to do with Cyvasse.

:rofl: Chaturanga is not only a yoga pose. Also it is the name of the oldest form of chess known. A big difference is that they are 4 opponents and fewer pieces than chess. Here you can see example: .

Anyway if you think that is not related with this thread I can open one just to treat this. But I have notice that you may know play chess (I am a really bad chess player, one game is too much to me). I need the help of people that know play chess to see if this crackpot theory has something to hold on or it is nothing on it.

Edit: the links didn´t work. Now they work.

[MikeL]

To find if there is a playing structure inside of the books (a chess game, a cyvasse game or a chaturanga game).

:rofl: Chaturanga is not only a yoga pose. Also it is the name of the oldest form of chess known. A big difference is that they are 4 opponents and fewer pieces than chess. Here you can see example: .

Anyway if you think that is not related with this thread I can open one just to treat this. But I have notice that you may know play chess (I am a really bad chess player, one game is too much to me). I need the help of people that know play chess to see if this crackpot theory has something to hold on or it is nothing on it.

Edit: the links didn´t work. Now they work.

Chaturanga is awesome. I had never heard of it before, so thank you for telling me about it :)

I think there has been a thread on the parallels between the books and Cyvasse before (e.g. maybe Cyvasse *is* the Game of Thrones) but I don't remember where it was. Personally, I don't think there's any direct parallels between the story in the books and either Chess or Cyvasse - there are too many characters with so many skills. Chess just has two sides, which start off evenly matched. Definitely make another thread for it, because I know there are other people who think differently to me.

The reason I don't think there is much of a parallel is that even if you make it just about the opening moves, the middle game and the end game, it's about the battle (by warriors) where as Game of Thrones is more about ruling (by politicians). This is why Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon were never very good at it. I do think that Chess/Cyvasse is an important game for someone to learn because it teaches you war strategy, but the Game of Thrones is something completely different.

If I was to recommend something that would teach you to rule people, it would be Texas Hold'em Poker. Chess/Cyvasse is a game in which you can see where all the pieces are - it is relatively clear where all the threats are - that's only applicable in war. Poker on the other hand teaches you more about real life because it teaches you how to deal with chance: not just random chance, but chance you have to weigh up. You have to understand psychology, understand why people lie, and sometimes that means the correct action is to commit everything when you have little certainty of winning. Other times you have to back down even when you have a pair of aces. It's no coincidence that every single President of the USA has been at least a moderately good poker player.

[bgona]

Thanks a lot. I didn't know about that thread, so I will read it. I don't want to repeat theories.

I know that kind of poker. I have played it a little. :D

At least I keep that I taught you about chaturanga (elephant is a piece at it).

Good luck with the rules and playing cyvasse!

[MikeL]

I've been doing some more reading on Chaturanga and Chinese Chess and it has been really interesting, both from a gaming perspective, and just to see how chess has evolved. Looking at the moves of the pieces (http://www.chessvariants.org/historic.dir/chaturanga.html, http://www.chessvariants.org/xiangqi.html) you can see that the Queen is clearly derived from, but more powerful than, the Councillor (in Chaturanga it can only move one square diagonally) or the Advisor (in Chinese chess it can only move within the confines of the 9-point "palace"), so it's actually a return to a more traditional power balance to have the Dragon with a shorter range. If we move down to six hexes a side board, I think we should limit the Dragon to a range of 3, but 4 when capturing (make it a missle piece - I think I understand you now LB :))

Other interesting comparisons:

• The Bishop in Chess is clearly derived from the Elephant (which in both Chaturanga and Chinese chess can move two spaces diagonally - the difference is that Elephants can jump over a single intervening space).
  
• Knights are common to all three variants, but in Chinese Chess the knight's cannot "jump" - that is the move can be blocked if there is a piece in the space directly next to the knight (the move is considered to be one space orthogonal, then one space diagonal).
  
• Rooks are also common to all three variants, but in both Chaturanga and Chinese Chess they are called Chariots.
  
• Pawns are thought of as infantry in all three variants.
  

As it turns out, our piece's movements (particularly knights/horses and elephants) don't correspond well to their counterparts in the older versions of chess, but designing a new scheme of movements is not something I really want to mess with at this stage. It may make it more interesting tactically if all the tier 2&3 pieces were a bit more limited movement wise, but I don't see how to do that without changing it up completely. I think we've got a good balance of long and short range pieces as is

I'm also more convinced that our set of rules isn't really all that complicated. The flanking attacks are unique to our variant, and since that was what first drew me into putting so much time into this, I'm really set on keeping them, and that means keeping the hexagonal board.

With Terrain, If you look at Chinese Chess and particularly Blitzkrieg, they have all terrain elements preset so that they are the same in every game - the river is always across the middle in Chinese Chess, and Blitzkrieg has an actual map, however GRRM clearly says in Feast for Crows that the mountains are configured by the player in the beginning, so to my mind it makes sense that all other terrain elements would be set up by the player.

FFC

• Myrcella vs. Prince
  
  • "He always sets his squares up the same way, with all the mountains in the front and his elephants in the passes...So I send my dragon through to eat his elephants." pg 373
    

So long story short, I'm not suggesting any changes at all in this post :) but it's been interesting to think about whether we might make any changes that tie Cyvasse more closely to more historical versions of Chess. Personally, I'm glad that our variant is actually pretty unique in a lot of ways. Hopefully that will be interesting enough to a lot of people to want to play it.

[MikeL]

It just occurred to me that with the rules as they are, we can play test a physical version easily enough with a hex grid, eg

http://tinypic.com/v...?pic=vq3xjk&s=6

and the pieces from two chess sets, preferably with pieces of difference sizes (since you can only have a maximum of two of any one piece).

Pawns = Rabble (need 5)

Small Rooks = Spears

Large Rooks = Elephants

Small Knights = Light Horse

Large Knights = Heavy Horse

Small Bishop = Crossbow

Large Bishop = Trebuchet

King = King

Large Queen = Dragon

For Mountains, Water, Forest and Hill tiles, it may just be easiest to use coloured pieces of card. I'm going to see about making this up.

[MikeL]

At the risk of boring you all to tears, I've got more to say! :) The last post got me thinking again about making a board up. So I started looking up professional board makers with the idea I'm going to get some quotes:

I spoke to one of the guys who runs this site:

http://www.gamesfromeverywhere.com.au/

And he put me on to this man Graeme Anthony, who does great fantasy style pewter work:

http://www.graemeanthonypewter.com.au/

So I'm going to ask him for a quote as to how much it would cost to make up a board and pieces as I've specified here:

www.mikelepage.com/CyvasseBoardspec.doc

I'll let you know what happens.

[MikeL]

Interesting quote by GRRM I found in one of the other Cyvasse threads:

He was asked about this at the Lexington signing last night. He said that he envisioned the game as a combination of a few games, I remember him mentioning Stratego and Chess and a couple others. Specifically he said that a few people had approached him about creating the game. He expressed doubt that he would agree to it. His reasoning was that Cyvasse was supposed to be a game like Chess that comes along once in a 1000 years and had infinite ways to play and could be studied and great masters could even be beaten by unexpected approaches. Trying to create something like that would be impossible.

He also used the example of writing advice he was once given. "If you have a character that is supposed to be a great poet... never include any of their poems, because chances are you are not a great poet."

I like the quote about poetry. Doesn't mean that I'm not going to keep trying though.

Having heard back from Graeme Anthony Pewter, I can tell it's going to be too expensive to make the set I want as a one-off. It's only going to be worth it if someone licenses the game from GRRM and starts selling it. That means getting it perfect first.

I learnt a lot when I actually set about printing out a board and using pieces - it makes it more clear what parts of the game work and what don't. It is definitely too complicated to work out which pieces can take which when you don't have a computer program doing the calculations for you. So here's an idea to simplify capture rules, I'm talking in absolutes as much as possible:

• Every piece can always capture pieces of lower tier levels.
  
• Flanking is the only way to increase effective tier level in attack (one tier level per flanker).
  
• Flankers may only be of the same tier level or weapon.
  
• A piece can never attack another piece of the same tier level with the weapon that beats it (i.e. can't go against rock paper scissors), but can serve as flanker.
  
• Terrain only acts in defence, and the only way to increase effective tier level by one in defence is to put a piece in its home terrain.
  
• No piece can enter the unoccupied home terrain of the piece with the weapon that beats it.
  
• Terrain is ambivalent as to which player placed it: both sides may benefit.
  

The main differences are that in this version Terrain is only a defensive bonus, and that a piece can never capture the piece (of the same tier level) with the weapon that beats it.

[MikeL]

Happy New Year people! Is anyone else still thinking about this?

I've just finished re-watching season 1 and I picked up so much more.

They are doing book 3 as two seasons, so by my reckoning we'll start seeing Cyvasse as a game in season 5 (start of book 4).

[libertine]

i think we will see cyvasse even sooner. in the trailer for season 3 there is a very brief moment at 0:49, where we can see someone making a cyvasse-move:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RzI9v_B4sxw

and i so want to play this one day, so please continue your work here!

unfortunately I am not in the position to help you guys, because you are just doing an awesome job here and I wouldn't be able to add anything of value to your great work. but I have some friends who are very interested in this, so if you actually gonna end up with something here, i'm definetely gonna buy it. :D

[MikeL]

i think we will see cyvasse even sooner. in the trailer for season 3 there is a very brief moment at 0:49, where we can see someone making a cyvasse-move:

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=RzI9v_B4sxw

and i so want to play this one day, so please continue your work here!

unfortunately I am not in the position to help you guys, because you are just doing an awesome job here and I wouldn't be able to add anything of value to your great work. but I have some friends who are very interested in this, so if you actually gonna end up with something here, i'm definetely gonna buy it. :D

Hey yeah I saw that, but I'm thinking/hoping those pieces look the same as those that have been on Rob/Stannis's maps when they're describing troop movements and such. There's no real reason for them to bring Cyvasse in until either the Dornish become involved or Tyrion gets exiled. In any case - the game's not finished yet! :ack:

Since the program seems to have fallen by the wayside, I've concentrated more of my efforts on getting a physical set made (as you might have read above). I think that will benefit the game in the end because the physical set makes certain difficulties more apparent. I'm tempted to make a few more changes to the tier system and certain pieces movements to simplify things even further.

For instance, after watching some youtube videos of chess boards being made, I realised that there's no reason the board can't be made up of squares arranged in a hexagonal grid - it makes the board a lot easier to put together (it's also far easier to cut wood at right angles), and it's also easier to see how the tiles and pieces fit onto the board physically.

Thanks for the encouragement! :)

[kid_isticus]

This really looks awsome. If you ever get a working game made, I'd really like to help play test it.

[MikeL]

Thanks Kid-isticus :)

I have to say that what other feedback I've been getting still makes me wonder if there are too many rules to work as a board game :P Whether it's a good board game, not whether it's a good computer game, is the standard by which we have to judge it.

It's been a few months since I've written about it so here's what has become apparent to me in that time.

It's a bit weird to have a board game where you don't use all the pieces in every game. Imagine a situation where people bought the board game and were provided 6 tier 2 pieces and 6 tier 3 pieces, but only got to use 5 of each tier in any one game. Soon enough people would just start using the 6th piece anyway. The only reason we've gone away from that is that the board may look crammed, but think about this: On a six-per-side hex grid board, you have 40 squares to put your pieces in during set up. If you had 6x Mountains, 6x Rabble, 2x each of Spears, Light Horse, Crossbows, Elephants, Heavy Horse and Trebuchet, plus 1 king and 1 dragon, that gives you 26/40 squares filled if you start with the dragon on the board (or 52/91 with two players and the no-mans-land strip). Stratego (one of GRRM's inspirations) starts with 80/100, so when you think about it, this isn't really that crammed, so those numbers are what I'm leaning towards now.

Also I've gone back to liking the idea of terrain only being associated with the tier 2 pieces - so 6x mountains, 2x hills, 2x waters, and 2x forests on each side of the board.

The problem is if it's not immediately clear which pieces can take which other pieces, That's where knowing the movements of the pieces is really important. I think having Trebuchets and Crossbows as pieces which can movie anywhere within a certain radius is a problem (it makes the crossbows and trebuchet ridiculously powerful as defensive pieces compared to the other pieces of their tier), so I tried to think of a different movement pattern: My idea is that they can either move one square orthogonally (as a king or rabble) or around the hexagon that is a certain distance from a fortress. So if a crossbow piece is n number of spaces away from its fortress, it can move in that ring around the fortress until it runs into another piece or mountain/terrain it cannot cross as long as it remains n number of spaces away from that fortress. A trebuchet is the same except it can jump mountains/terrain - which could result in some very unexpected captures. The quirk would be that this allows 3 ranges of motion: first is 1 space orthogonally, second is moving in a hexagonal ring around the home fortress, or third is moving in a hexagonal ring around the opposing fortress. If either fortress is ruined that still leaves two ranges of motion.

This leaves the dragon as the only ranged piece, which I like better. Another reason I like having the board fairly crammed at the beginning is that early on the dragon will be quite vulnerable to flanking attacks.

[King Tyrion I]

:thumbsup:

Great work, guys!

I definitely want to play cyvasse, since I'm into chess.

[MikeL]

Thanks Lord_Tyrion! I like Chess, and I'm good enough to hold my own against everyone I know, but I suspect anyone who plays regularly/competitively would wipe the floor with me :)

So... Question for the chess player: I've never really thought about chess this way, but how important do you think it is that it's actually impossible to capture an opposing piece during the first move(s)? The way we have Cyvasse currently lends itself to the first few moves (after the screen is taken down) being a bloodbath.

There's a bit in ADWD which suggests that a Cyvasse game can end quite quickly (soon after Tyrion is sold when he boasts his cyvasse skill) - I'm paraphrasing: one of the Yunkai nobles "resigns in disgust, moments later" so I think this is probably okay, but we also know games can take upwards of 3 hours when both players are good, like in Chess.