Silver Berzerker won Part 1 of the final HoH challenge. This means Barnaby and Blimp will play in Part 2, and the winner will go on to face Silver in Part 3. We’ll be playing live at 10 PM Central Wednesday night.

UPDATE: Due to this game taking a long-ass time to play (certainly my responsibility), we suspended play on Wednesday night and will be resuming at 9 PM Central Thursday night.

Part 2 of the Final HoH challenges will be a one-on-one match of Stratego. Each player will have 40 pieces on a 10×10 board; there’s two 2×2 sections in the middle of the board that are unenterable, and the other squares are all fair game. The objective of the game is to capture your opponent’s flag piece, or capture all of their movable pieces. Your pieces’ identities (relative to their locations, that is) will begin the game concealed from your opponent.

Each turn, you’ll move one of your pieces. Most pieces that move, with one exception, can move one space per turn, horizontally or vertically – no diagonals. Also, you can’t move one piece back and forth between the same two spaces on three consecutive turns. So you’ll submit your moves like we usually do on grids – “A7 to A6”, for instance. Probably intuitively, you can’t move one of your pieces to a space another of yours already occupies. If you attempt to move to a space occupied by an opposing piece, then both pieces will be revealed and the conflict will be resolved, according to the rules I’ll explain further below. Whichever piece loses the conflict will be removed, and the remaining piece will occupy (or continue to occupy) that space.

Here’s the pieces each player starts the game with:
1 Marshal – rank #1
1 General – rank #2
2 Colonels – rank #3
3 Majors – rank #4
4 Captains – rank #5
4 Lieutenants – rank #6
4 Sergeants – rank #7
5 Miners – rank #8
8 Scouts – rank #9
1 Spy – rank S
6 Bombs – rank B
1 Flag – rank F
The pieces with numbered ranks are listed here from strongest to weakest – a lower rank number always captures a higher rank number. If a piece attacks one of the same rank, both are captured.

The bombs are immobile pieces that will blow up any piece that attacks them, except the Miners – those pieces will defuse and capture a Bomb it attacks. Bombs aren’t removed from the board unless captured by a Miner.

The Scouts are the only pieces capable of moving multiple spaces in one turn (in the same manner as a rook in chess).

The Spy will capture any piece (except a Bomb) that it attacks, but will be captured by any piece that attacks it. If one Spy attacks the other, again, both are captured.

The Flag, of course, will be captured by any piece. Update: Yes, the flag is also immobile. (I knew I was forgetting something.) The player who captures the other player’s Flag, or all of the other player’s movable pieces, will win Part 2 and advance to face the winner of Part 1 in Part 3.

Here’s the board. For each piece conflict, I’ll reveal the outcome in a manner such as this: “Player A 3 takes Player B 4.” I’ll write this on the sheet next to the board, and will only leave the latest result written out each time. Beyond that, it’s up to you to keep track of what pieces are where.

Each of you will need to send me your opening configurations for your 40 pieces before we play. As always, anyone else who wants to come watch is welcome to. And if there’s any questions (I whipped this up fast so there may be something missing) let me know.