Re: An Ark Nova maximum animals puzzle
Posted: 12 September 2026, 20:27
yazavats wrote: ↑12 September 2026, 20:05Okay, so my error was in thinking waza small can't be utilized during hypnosis. It apparently can since that's what BGA allows. I suppose even though you're using an opponent's action, the 2+1 criteria still applies since it's not something determined by the action itself. It's a niche scenario which I've never utilized myself so forgive my ignorance. I mostly play waza small for money or stalling, if ever. I'm not familiar with the hot seat game mechanic you speak of. I wasn't aware you can manipulate the game state to that extent on BGA outside of making a tutorial.FrankJones wrote: ↑12 September 2026, 19:40
But 9 of those actions will be playing 3 small animals. Only the double eagle action will be 2 animals. So, you calculated everything right except the final arithmetic, which is 2 + (3)*(9). 29 animals.
Reshuffling is also a very niche thing I haven't considered. I've never been in a game where the deck ran out of cards. Okay, thanks for the new insights.
Yeah, the reshuffle idea only occurred to me after the fact, and it's tough to set up, because once I had everything else ready, I knew I was going to launch the sequence when the deck finally cooperated after the break. 3 times in a row I had to just skip to the next break with sponsors because somehow a batch of projects and medium-large animals came out. So, I didn't think to have one of the relevant release projects on the board at the start of the sequence. A pity, because then I could have tried for 32. And there's no way I'm doing it again. It was move number 3220 when I initiated the action.
Hotseat is the same as playing with 3 friends - I could have had 3 friends playing on their own computers, but it was easier to just play hot seat (which allows any number of players to play from the same computer).
I controlled all 4 players, which was tough at times and makes it easy to screw up. More ideal would be 4 different humans each of whom was keeping track of his or her responsibilities.
Regardless, as long as the players are playing cooperatively, essentially, the setup can be arrived at. (In a real game, obviously someone would end the game once it becomes apparent what the player is trying to do
) Or would trigger a break if the player tried stacking the 2x tokens before starting the sequence. Or any number of reasons why this scenario would never come close to happening in a real game. But I'm guessing people have done double eagle with waza small and hypnosis, so perhaps some people can chime in with their actual personal record for animals played in one turn So, what I'm wondering is, can this be done with zero x2 tokens on the animals card at the start? I think so but I'm not sure?
Start with eagle eagle. Then use determination from one of the eagles to play a posturing 3x bird, grabbing the 3 exterior placement bonuses and thus 3 of the x2 tokens. Include one Europe animal or any other animal that places a tile, and put it on the actual 2x. Grab the x2 from the 15-reputation spot.
Now, we still have one more determination, and the animals card has all 5 x2 tokens, and we still have our two hypnosis actions. SO, we still have 9 animals actions left.
So, in theory, this could be set up without the x2 tokens at the start, making it possibly in theory to execute this to some extent in an actual game. If the player had this set up, there would be no way to stop it, right? Triggering end game would still allow this as the final turn. What would not be possible is repeatedly doing the full-strength cards action multiple times because the other players wouldn't just be sitting around doing nothing.
And in an actual game, money would be a factor because nobody would be able to have all those discount sponsors in play.
So, someone could set this up in a real game, and the limiting factor would be the usual ones: money, cards, and enclosure space.
And for what it's worth, I had no idea whether this whole thing would work either, or exactly how the hypnosis would work. That's why I wanted to try it out.
I'm still learning the game, and I'm not all that good (yet).
I figured it would be a good brain puzzle to try while also becoming very familiar with the deck. And I like doing puzzles to keep my brain sharp, and, I am often confined to my computer area for long stretches listening to music, so, I figured, why not goof around and try this.