Eric Brosius (#26131),

That was indeed a bizarre placement, and we had the same questions. We played that the wall deflects the robot into the wall, stopping it. On the next move, the robot could either turn left or right.

-Chris

Eric Brosius (#26131),

I don't have the rules in front of me but i think that a robot bounces on a diagonal wall of it's OWN color while the rest of the robots pass through...

So the Yellow robot bounces on Yellow diagonal walls, e.t.c

GeoMan (#26874),

You are right. The trick is that one of the yellow diagonal walls is snuggled up so close to a regular wall that it's hard to see where a non-yellow robot winds up after the bounce (actually it's not the rules you need to look at, but the board with the unusually situated yellow diagonal wall.)

Eric Brosius (#26877),

This problem is also possible if a robot is sitting next
to any of the diagonal walls. I e-mail Rio Grande
games about this problrm and Jay's reply was
that the robot stops on top of the diagonal wall
and is then free to move in any direction as the
next move even back the way it came.

Eric Brosius (#26131),

Our group plays this wall a bit differently. We play that a non-yellow robot runs into the wall and then on it's next move it MUST move back in the way it came in. Thus, for any non-yellow robot, the yellow gate is basically a dead end.

It seems counterintuitive that a robot could stop at a wall and on the next move continue on the other side of that same wall. It seems even more counterintuitive that the allowable moves from a given square would depend on how the robot moved into that square in the first place.

Wouldn't it make sense for the robot to stop just short of the square containing the yellow wall? If we actually built a 3-D board and threw robots at the wall, I believe this is the sort of behavior we'd get.

GeoMan (#26874),

From the rules:

When a robot reaches a square with a diagonal colored wall, it passes through the wall if its color matches the wall and bounces off the wall at right angles if its color does not match the wall. In these cases, the robot does not "stop" and continues to an obstacle, counting the entire move as just one move.

We recently had this come up for us, and here is how we interpreted it.

Definitely go look at the board - here:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/44564

You'll see the offending wall in the lower right quadrant.

For robots who hit this moving (in that picture) from left to right, and who are deflected, they will be deflected 90 degrees, which will force them into the wall, where they will be stopped. If the diagonal wall were two squares away from that wall, as is the red diagonal on the upper right quadrant, we can all agree that the robot would hit the wall and stop - and could then move "right or left" (according to their original direction) proceeding "along" the wall. The trick is, if they go right (according to that picture, or east may be better), they will again hit that wall, which I think means that they end up just hitting that wall again. If they go left (west), they proceed happily along.

So - if that diagonal wall stops you, you end up having to go west (young robot) heading back the way you came.

Why would you stop and pick a direction? That doesn't make sense, and while I think a "stop spot" would be interesting, none currently exist.

My big question was - say I said I could complete in ten moves, but I actually did it in nine - can I "waste" a move hitting that wall (assuming I ended up there), and bump my count up by one (or more) just sitting there banging up a robot's head armor? I know in most cases you might not care anyways, but, it does make me wonder.

Anyway - that's my thoughts - anny objections?

Russell

The official ruling on the yellow diagonal wall and other possible situations where another robot is sitting bedside a disgonal wall and causes the same issue, is that the robot stops on the wall and then may (immediately or later after another robot has moved) move away in any of the three directions. It is not required to remember which way the robot got to the diagonal wall.