Tigers Bears & Dragons
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Tigers Bears & Dragons
aka. Island Champion© 2013-14 Alvanno, © 2024 Alvanno LLC
Eliminate all of the other player's pieces (Tigers or Bears), then conquer the two central islands. If one is empty and you're in control of the other (alone or with a prisoner), that's enough to win the game.
Tigers Bears & Dragons is a 2-player game, but 3 kinds of pieces take turns: Tigers, Bears, and Dragons. The Dragons' loyalty alternates between the Tigers and Bears, allowing both players to move the Dragons.
The movemeter at the top-left points to which piece's turn it is. Each full rotation of the movemeter is a round of the game. An arc links the Dragons to either Tigers or Bears, showing who they're loyal to and who controls their turn. After each of the Dragons' turns, they switch loyalty.
Half the squares are islands, and the others water. In this game when there's a contest between pieces on sand and in water, it's an advantage to be on an island.
Over empty terrain, all pieces can move one square in any direction, or two squares if at least half the distance from edge of starting square to center of ending square is over land, along a path straight from center of starting square to center of ending square.
You can challenge any piece that's next to your square, in any direction.
When you select a piece, arrows appear that show all the moves you can make. Arrows for challenges are colored to hint what the odds are. The odds depend on how much advantage or disadvantage you would have in that contest.
To see the odds and possible outcomes of a move, hold the square the arrow is pointing to, and read the line above the board. While still holding your finger or the mouse button down, you can check other possible moves to see their odds.
If you tap, click, or release your hold on a square that's a possible move, that makes the move. If you were just holding a square to see what the odds are, you can cancel the move by sliding your finger or the mouse cursor back to the piece you selected to move.
When a piece challenges another to a contest, it ends one of 4 ways:
| Win | Defender eliminated |
| Trap | Challenger traps defender |
| Get Trapped | Defender traps challenger |
| Lose | Challenger eliminated |
Which way it ends depends on advantages and chance. Advantages are explained below, and affect the possible outcomes and the odds. The game then randomly decides the contest according to the odds.
Example: If the possible outcomes in the situation are Win / Trap / Get Trapped, there's a 1/3 chance of each.
There are 3 kinds of advantages in this game that affect the odds in a challenge:
| Terrain | Being on higher terrain than the opponent is an advantage. |
| Alertness | Being more ready than the opponent is an advantage. |
| Initiative | Being on the offensive gives you an advantage. |
The possible outcomes and odds are figured by adding up the difference in advantages. In this game all advantages are equally important, so the total is easy to figure, but the game adds them up for you and shows colored arrows and hint messages as in this table:
| Advantage | Win | Trap | Trapped | Lose | Arrow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy (+3) | 100% | Bold Green | |||
| Medium (+2) | 1/2 | 1/2 | Green | ||
| Slight (+1) | 1/3 | 1/3 | 1/3 | Yellow | |
| Even | 1/2 | 1/2 | Red | ||
| Disadvantage | 1/3 | 1/3 | 1/3 | Bold Red |
Example: If an alert Tiger in water wants to challenge a resting Bear on an island, the Tiger has the advantages of initiative and alertness, while the Bear has the advantage of terrain. So the challenger has 2 advantages, minus the defender's 1 advantage, for a total of +1, which means the Tiger has a slight advantage in the contest (the hint arrow would be yellow).
Every piece is either alert or resting. Two of each type of piece can be alert at a time.
Alert pieces have a star on them -- whether a Gold or Silver star, the advantage is the same. Gold stars mark the pieces that were alerted most recently, while Silver stars mark pieces that have been alert the longest. When you alert another piece while two of your pieces are already alert, the one with the Silver star is put to rest.
(For color-blind players, the top point of Silver stars aims straight up, and on Gold stars it aims up and to the right.)
When it's your turn and any of your pieces is next to a Dragon, you can bribe the Dragons 1 coin to allow you to trap a Dragon with no risk.
When the Dragons are loyal to the other player, you can bribe them 2 coins to switch loyalty for their next move. (But you can't do that in consecutive turns, or in the 1st 4 rounds.)
The dragons then offer their loyalty back to the other player for 3 coins. If the other player accepts that, the dragons will refund you the 2 coins you had paid them.
If you challenge a Dragon when the Dragons are loyal to you, without bribing them, they will switch loyalty to your opponent.
The endgame starts when all of the Tigers or Bears have been eliminated. At that point the eliminated player has lost the game, but may still be able to achieve a draw (tie).
In the endgame, the Dragons stop alternating loyalty and are under the control of the losing player -- except when bribed by the other player.
As long as your browser is set to allow pages to store persistent data, you can simply close the game and it will resume the next time you open it. Clicking the "Game" button will confirm it's saved, or warn that it couldn't be saved.
If you're running the game in a "Private Browsing" session, then the game will be lost if you close it.
If you clear the stored data of your brower while the game is closed, that will erase the saved game. But if you clear browser data while the game is open, and then either make a move or click the "Game" button in the game, that will re-save the game so it will resume next time you open it.
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This game was conceived in 2012 as "Tigers Bears & Dragons" and first published in 2013-14 as "Island Champion". Its purpose is to be shorter and easier than chess but not becoming boring as quickly as checkers or tic-tac-toe. It has some element of chance to lighten up the game, yet still involves enough strategy that there's satisfaction in a win and room to gain skill. Also to increase the fun, a 3rd party who is under the influence of both players rather than moved by the computer or a remote person. The board has been reduced from traditional 8x8 to 6x6 to make the game quicker and easier to see and play on small screens.