Users > Dors > Ajars's Rake Guide

Disclaimer: Rake is by far my worst game, and so this guide will be very basic.

The Basics

How to Play

To play Heket's Rake, you must meet an opponent at a Rake Court (there's one near every Chariot Stop), with the Ante to play. The Ante for all courts, as far as I know, is 1 Iron Knot Mushroom. At the Court, click on the desk, and select your opponent's name. They must do the same. Once this is done, the game begins.

The Rake Court is very large compared to the Tug Court and Reflection Pools, and consists of 135 tiles in a rectangle format, 9 tiles high by 15 tiles wide. The Rake will start offset one tile east or west from the dead center of the court, skewed in favor of whoever is going second. For purposes of this guide, it will be assumed that the Rake starts one tile east of dead center. With this setup, Player 1 is going West, Player 2 is going East. So, as soon as the game starts, the court looks like the diagram below, with no mushrooms on the court. The "Rake" is the white statue on the court.

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

To win in Heket's Rake, you want to move the Rake to the farthest column on your side of the court, or past it. To determine which side of the court is yours, switch to Cartographer's Camera (I also find this camera view to be the best for playing Heket's Rake) and click on the desk. The side of the desk window that your name appears on matches up with your side of the court from Cartographer's Camera.

In Rake, you and your opponent alternate turns. On your turn you may either plant a mushroom, or move the rake. If you choose to plant a mushroom, it plants the mushroom on the tile where you are standing, and your turn ends immediately. To move the rake, you must "jump" it over one or more mushrooms (it doesn't matter who placed the mushroom), and then from that tile, you can "jump" it again. Jumping over a mushroom removes the mushroom from the court. If you're moving the rake, your turn ends when there are no mushrooms adjacent to the Rake, or you click the "Pass" button. (If there is a possible spot you could jump to, but you don't want to, you'll have to hit Pass to end your turn. Unlike Tug, there is no time limit per turn, and so games between two experienced (or horribly inexperienced) players can often last an hour or more. Note that you can move off the court's east or west side, but not off the court's north or south side.

How to Advance in Rank, Levels, and Pass the Test

I will be writing up a separate guide for this part, as all Conflict games use the same ranking system, and the system itself is fairly complex. Until then, feel free to /chat Dors or Ajars in-game for a quick explanation.

Rake Strategy

Rake strategy is either deviously hard to teach, or I'm too incompetent to know how. That said, there are some basic tricks.

Simple Strategy/Info

• Try to avoid making small jumps. Moving takes a turn, so it gives your opponent a free mushroom. Jumping only a single mushroom is a common mistake by new players, and effectively a waste of a turn, as your opponent can just use his turn to replace the mushroom jumped. Linking up multiple mushrooms to jump in a series on one turn is key to winning.

• The Player who moves second has a significant advantage. Because he is only two mushroom-jumps away from a winning position (see Early Win, below), this means Player 1 has only three turns to plant mushrooms and move the Rake away from Player 2's mushroom chain.

Early Win

By moving the rake within one mushroom's jump from your winning column, you will guarantee a win if you opponent is unable to "link up" with an already-existing mushroom in one turn, so that he can pull the Rake two or more tiles away from your edge. For example:

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

In the above diagram, Player 1 has spent his three turns placing mushrooms directly towards his side, while Player 2 has spent his two turns doing the same and it is Player 2's turn. By jumping the two shrooms east of the Rake, Player 2 has effectively won the game.

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

No matter where Player 1 places his mushroom, Player 2 can respond by placing his mushroom directly east of the Rake.

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This forces Player 1 to jump his one shroom, wasting his turn.

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

Now Player 2 places a shroom east of the Rake's new position, and there's nothing Player 1 can do to stop him.

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Two-Jumps

Placing a mushroom adjacent to another can be a good defensive tactic when your opponent is trying to link up to a chain of mushrooms from an angle, like below, where it is Player 1's turn.:

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

By placing a mushroom at E5, Player 1 stops Player 2 from linking up with his chain of mushrooms, at least in the short term:

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

Circular Jumps

You can often use your opponents mushrooms against him. Observe the following setup, slightly modified (1 mushroom at J4 added, mushroom at B2 moved to C2) from a Rank 5 game between Dors and Styxx, where it is Player 1's turn:

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R=Rake, O=Mushroom, X=Tiles on which Player 1 Wins, Y=Tiles on which Player 2 Wins.

There's a lot of mushrooms between the Rake and Player 2's side, and Player 1 will have an increasingly difficult time stopping Player 2 from linking up. While Player One could jump up and left to E3, this isn't much help, because with only one shroom at F4, Player 2 has linked up with a mushroom chain towards his winning column. However, Player 1 could make the following, complicated jump:

1. Up and right to J3, then
2. Down to J6, then
3. Left to H6, then
4. Up and left to F4, ten
5. Up to F2

Which leaves the court as:

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Now, a win by Player 1 is inevitable (barring any screw-ups like a misclick).

Extending a Diagonal Line to North/South Edges

If your opponent is using a diagonal chain on mushrooms, you can often cut off the chain by extending it to the north or south edge of the board, making it useless. Observe the following setup, where it is Player 2's 2nd turn:

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If Player 2 doesn't want to extend his chain to the east out and force Player 1 to move, he could instead plant at E1, preventing Player 1 from jumping there. (not something I'd necessarily recommend, but just meant to show the mechanics of extending a diagonal line):

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Now, Player 1 plants at F3, trying to create an alternate chain. Player 2 responds by planting at G3:

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Now, Player 1 can't directly use the northwest mushroom chain at all, and must start anew. Since Player 2 already has one mushroom towards his side, he's at an advantage.

Practice Makes Perfect

The best way to get better at Rake is simply to play games. Fighting your way up the ladder and having to reset might be annoying, but on your second climb up, you'll (hopefully) have learned quite a lot. While practice games can help, in my experience they don't match up with games where both players have something at stake (such as Rank). I've played games where my opponent gets noticeably better as the game progresses (which can be very disheartening if you were about equally skilled to start with). The "strategies" listed in this guide are just very basic tricks, and while they may help jumpstart you at the beginning, experience on the Court is vital.

After the Match

As mentioned in Ajars's Tug Guide, quickly running off after a game is rude, regardless if you've won or lost. When two people play a Ranked game of Heket's Rake, someone will walk off back to square one. As such, it's important not to be a sore loser if you lose, and not to gloat if you've won (gloating would include remarks such as, "Gee, that didn't take long"). If the match was especially hard-fought, you may wish to return the other player's Ante as an acknowledgement (I wouldn't recommend doing this after every single match though, as it cheapens the meaning).

When Someone Disappears

During a match, someone may lose their internet connection, or the server might crash. If one opponent fails to return, it's likely the Heket's Rake court will be reset by another pair of people wishing to play. In this case, the game is a stalemate. This situation should not be exploited to avoid a loss. The best thing to do in this situation is meet up later and rebuild the court back to the pre-crash layout (if just one player dropped, the other should write down the court layout). However, if no record of the layout exists, but you had clearly lost by the time you or the other person dropped, be sure to meet up with them when they return and give them the win they earned. Conflict and cowardice don't go well together.