This page last updated November 8, 2008
(A Description of the House Lizards game, by Rick Loomis)
. I started out making non-aggression pacts with all four of my neighbors. My eastern neighbor offered to join with me in an attack on the guy north of him (and northeast of me), which I agreed to, since the intended victim was the only player ahead of me in score. But my supposed ally never got around to sending any troops north. I put a few strong bands in the northeast part of my territory but figured I'd wait until my "ally" started fighting. Meanwhile my southern neighbor reported being attacked by the player to the west of him. I wasn't doing anything else, so I thought I'd help him(and take some tempting-looking dens and temples). I "gated" a band of 200+ lizards down from a temple two hexes away from my home den. I didn't think this was any big deal, since I wasn't at war with any of my neighbors. My northeast neighbor just "happened" to have a spy lizard within range, and when he saw me empty out this critically located temple, he "gated" in a maximum band of 300 lizards. I was quite surprised when I got the results of that turn. There were 300 enemy lizards within one move (two hexes) of my home den and I had (gulp!) 67 lizards defending it. I had a couple other small bands in the area, but movement order is random, and even if all of mine moved first, he would win the critical battle. And if his band moved first, my little bands would all be destroyed with few enemy losses as they showed up one at a time to be outnumbered by the doubled defenders. And once he took my home den, I would not be allowed to recruit new warrior lizards at all of my dens in the area. This would make it nearly impossible for me to get enough reinforcements to take my home den back. Was I doomed?
I desperately scanned my printout and the rules for something else I could do. I had several yellow lizards in the area who could throw rocks at him, but he was in a temple, which defends completely against rocks. I looked at the spell list. I didn't have enough black lizards to "Coerce" or "Freeze." And you can't "Mould" a temple hex. But what's this? The "Shunt" spell doesn't say it won't work against lizards in a temple. Aha! I could push him farther away from my home den, and then whittle him down by throwing rocks once he was out of the temple. As I whittled him down, and brought up more black lizards, eventually I would be able to "Coerce" the survivors and gain an extra hundred or so lizards. Since I couldn't throw rocks at lizards in a temple, I had my yellow lizards throw rocks at the hex I was going to push him into. Spells come before movement, so I knew if he tried to move into my home den this turn, my spell was going to work. My only worry was if he would think of the "Shunt" spell also (he had to have enough black lizards to be able to do the "Gate" spell) and would "Shunt" my black lizards out of range. If his spell went off before my spell, I would be out of range and he would still be two hexes away from my home den (but at least I could beef up the defenses a little.)
Since spells and rock throwing are randomly shuffled by the computer, naturally my yellow lizards threw rocks at an empty hex, and then my black lizards "Shunted" the enemy into that hex. But this turn I had two groups of yellow lizards in range, and two groups of black lizards. I could throw rocks twice, push him into a water hex, and call up a sea monster. This should whittle him down a bit.
This time I pushed him into the water, THEN we throw a pile of rocks into the empty hex he just left. And his 300 lizards wiped out my sea monster with no losses! Can't I inflict ANY losses on him? Oh, wait. Later on in the turn a whirlpool moves into the water hex where I pushed him, and killed 260 of his 300 lizards. That's good, I guess. But I had hoped to capture over 100 lizards. I can now easily "Coerce" his remaining 40 lizards. His loss of 300 and my gain of 40 was just enough to make my score higher than his. (Well, there were a couple other battles too. He took one of my dens, and I "Coerced" another band of his lizards.) Since our scores were getting close to the winning point, I had all my grey lizards build bridges (worth 10 points each) and won the game.
The interplay of magic spells can be quite fascinating, especially since you can't predict which spell will happen first. The same with movement. You are limited by the number of orders you can give, and the fact that you cannot specify which of your move orders comes first. (Lizards follow orders very well, but apparently their "time sense" isn't too exact. They'll move when they get around to it.) It doesn't seem like much of a restriction at first, but when you want to move a band of more than 150 lizards out of a hex, and another band of more than 150 into that hex, if the latter band happens to move first, their move is cancelled because the former makes the total more than 300. Tactics are very important, and the larger band always wins combat, but you can never be sure what's going to happen because of the randomization of orders.
The order limitation forces you to make some interesting choices. At first, 30 orders seems like a lot. But when you start moving a lot of spies around, and you have a lot of dens to recruit from, you find that you don't have enough orders to move all your reinforcements up. You have to start planning more carefully, so your reinforcements can band together and take fewer orders to move. I'm one of those types who enjoys careful planning of the "behind the lines" stuff like calculating the layout of new dens for maximum growth, and figuring out how to get the reinforcements to the front lines with the fewest moves.
If you haven't even considered LIZARDS! yet, maybe you should. Download the rules and read them. Rules Downloads. Think about trying at least one game. More info about Lizards! on the Lizards! pages.
Lizards! is played only by email. You get your turns as pdf files, and you submit your orders on the web.
To read other strategy articles about Lizards, see FBQ.
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