Overview
Witagog is a game where you pit your own Witagog army against your opponent's. Your goal is to destroy the opponent's Witagogs or end three consecutive turns with a witagog in their arch. When taking an arch, it's only important that you end your turn with one of your gogs in their arch, if they push you out and you move back in, or if you take it with two different gogs [**has to be the same gog now**], it still counts. Witagogs are customizable - you can build them into many different purposes. Strategy is not just in board position but also in changing your army's capabilities to meet changing circumstances.
Witagog uses the Tournament Ranking System. The skill showing your advancement is named "Witagog Mastery," and it has no known practical benefit.
Witagog Basics:
- Strength - Determines how much damage the gog can deal
- Defense - Determines how much damage an attacked gog can deal back
- Max HP - The maximum HP your gog can heal up to
- Heal - Amount of HP healed per turn (healing takes place at the end of your build phase)
- Speed - How much you can move the gog (see movement, below, it's not a simple count of squares)
- Legs - up to 8 legs represented by filled-in circles (two cardinal directions must be filled in before the in-between diagonal leg can be put in)
Each stat starts at one, and each gog starts with no legs.
A turn has two phases: move and build. Attacking happens during the build phase. Healing happens at the end of your build phase.
Note that when you click a gog, the left hand picture (which shows which legs it has, and allows you to move or attack) is oriented with the top facing north (not your opponent). So if you are on the east side of the board, you'd use the left circle to move/build/attack towards your opponent.
The Move Phase:
The move phase comes first (this phase is skipped on the first turn). You are assigned 49 move points, plus half of any move points you did not use the previous turn. To move, click on a gog, then click one of the filled-in circles on the left hand picture. Moving a gog costs 49/Speed rounded down, move points. You can move more than one gog in a turn if you have sufficient points. Ex: you have two gogs with speed 2. You can move both one square each, or move one gog two squares. If you move into an opponent's gog, you shove it one square in the direction you moved. You can't shove a gog off the edge or into another gog. You can only move your gog in a direction in which it has legs, which can only be added during the build phase. When you are done moving all your gogs (either you have insufficient move points to move any, or no longer wish to move), click any of your gogs and hit the "done" button.
The Build Phase:
During the build phase, you are given 49 build points (except for 33 build points for player 1 on the first round), plus half of any build points you did not use the previous turn. Each build action on a gog costs one point plus one for every "improvement" the gog has (legs + stats). So the first leg or stat raise costs 1 point, the second costs 2 points, and so on. To build a leg, click one of the
empty circles on the left hand picture. The diagonal legs can be filled in when the two neighboring legs have been filled in. To raise a stat, click one of the squares to the right of the stat. To attack, click one of the
filled-in circles (if there is an enemy gog in the next square in that direction). Attacking costs the same as raising a stat or building a leg, but does not raise the cost of the next attack or improvement. You can attack with or build on more than one gog if you have the points - you can even build on a gog and attack with it in the same turn. You can attack as many times a turn as you have build points. Ending the build phase is just like ending the move phase, and also ends your turn. When you end your turn, half of the build/move points that you haven't used carry over to the next turn and your gogs heal.
When Witagogs attack:
One witagog attacks another, dealing the amount of damage equal to its strength and taking damage equal to the defender's defense. The defender will die if his HP are less than or equal to the attackers strength. If the defender survives the attack, however, it deals another round of damage equal to it's defense. This means that if you attack, either kill the enemy gog, or be prepared to take twice the def value in damage or die yourself.
- You defeat the opponent, and survive. (If you have STR equal-to or more-than opponent's HP, and if he has less DEF than your HP)
- You defeat the opponent, but your gog is also killed. (If you have more STR than opponent's HP, but he has more DEF than your HP)
- You are killed instead, weakening the enemy gog though (If you have less STR than opponent's HP, and you have less HP than TWICE his DEF)
- The gogs only get weaker (If you have less STR than opponent's HP, but your HP are greater than TWICE his DEF). If this happens, the attacker takes twice the defense value in damage.
Basic Strategies:
- Specialize your gogs. One attacking gog and one defensive gog are much cheaper to build and use than one gog that has high attack and defense.
- Attack with two smaller gogs to kill a larger gog. You might lose one of the smaller ones, but they lose a big one.
- Back up your gog when position matters. If you have a back-up gog behind one of your primary gogs, your opponent can't push him back. This is especially important for taking arches.
- Never underestimate the power of hit points. Don't know what to spend your build points on? Buy some hit points. This is especially good when you have one or two leftover points at the begining, spend the points on hitpoint upgrades for your rear gogs instead of wasting them when it discards half of them at the end of the turn.
- Conserve movement points if you don't have a firm plan of attack. You get half of them back later, which means that if you have a 2-speed gog, you get an extra move out of it the next round.
- Don't waste your gogs attacking unless you know you can kill. You only get so many gogs, and unless you can kill something off This Round, you're often better off not attacking.
- If something didn't work, don't do it again. If you lose a high strength gog to his gogs, don't build another high strength gog. Look at where his weaknesses are and build a new gog that can exploit those weaknesses.
- Speed and legs must be added the turn before moving to be usable in the movement phase (you can build and attack with a leg on the same turn). Max HP and heal must be added the turn before attacking to boost actual HP. Strength, though, can be added immediately before an attack.
- Speed Kills. Building speed early will allow you to take positional control of the board, as well as placing your opponent on the defensive.
(See also: Witagog Rankings)