Lose of a match because of a pillbug bug

[Nekkue]

To sum up, the pillbug moved a piece (in this case the queen) when it shouldn't because the piece had to move through a narrow gap. As far as I'm concerned this is not allowed according to the rules... (image of the movement here: https://imgur.com/a/k6SV3cg)

I have just started to play Hive on BGA and it piss me off I got this bug in one of my first matches in the platform... Is this frequent?

[suprisefish]

This is a legal move. The pillbug lifts a bug on top of itself and then drops it down into another adjacent space. So only gates on upper levels of the hive (if there are beetles on top of the hive) affect the pillbug’s ability to warp bugs.

[suprisefish]

BGA does have quite a few bugs though and other poorly designed features. The hive community is trying to address that and there will be a new site dedicated to hive launching pretty soon. Join the hive discord to find out more info (and meet other players generally).

https://discord.gg/QpFAsWYH

[Nekkue]

This is a legal move. The pillbug lifts a bug on top of itself and then drops it down into another adjacent space. So only gates on upper levels of the hive (if there are beetles on top of the hive) affect the pillbug’s ability to warp bugs.

The rules literally says:

For the pillbug: 'The Pillbug may not move a piece through a too-narrow gap of stacked pieces (violating the Freedom to Move Rule)'


The Freedom of Movement rule: 'A piece must be physically able to be moved to its destination, one space at a time. In most cases, this means a piece must "slide" to its destination. Some configuration of pieces might leave a gap that is too narrow for a piece to pass through.'

So what I understand from the rules despite the movement can be interpreted as a 'lift', the bug must still be able to 'slide'. If not, the movement its forbidden otherwise.

[sacrificed2Kali]

you are describing a different situation:

you said it yourself when you quote 'The Pillbug may not move a piece through a too-narrow gap of stacked pieces', the keywords here are 'stacked pieces'. using your image as an example: if there was a beetle on top of black spider, then a narrow gap is formed between white mosquito and the hypotetic beetle, then the black pillbug won't be able to move pieces between those stacks.

As for the white queen, without the pillbug it can't 'slide' through the gap formed between white pillbug and black grasshopper, but it can move over the hive thanks to pillbug ability.

[Nekkue]

Thank you for the clarifications. Although I understand what you are referring to and that the "stacked pieces" part was missing, I find it a bit confusing that the rules talk about narrow gaps in this context. Maybe it is because of the language barrier but in the context of this game it makes more sense to me to mention the concept of "narrow gaps" in the case of sliding movements.

[suprisefish]

“The special ability allows the pillbug to move an adjacent piece two spaces; up onto itself and then down into another empty space adjacent to itself”.

Maybe there is a better way to describe it but the rules specifically point out that the piece is lifted up and over the pillbug. So gates are only relevant if they prevent the piece from sliding upwards or downwards, not along the ground level.

Or to put it another way, the pillbug ability is just two beetle movements in sequence.