Regent, Bitch and Grue, for their parts, were left looking bewildered.

Maybe they don’t know stuff about shogi.

“Maybe you should clarify?” Grue suggested.

“Shogi is an Eastern variant of chess,” I said, “Some of the pieces move a little differently, though I can’t remember how.  But the big difference is that there’s a rule that says you can take any of the opponent’s pieces you’ve captured and place them on the board as your own.”

“More or less right,” Trickster said.

It’s a pretty huge difference. In regular chess, the resources on both sides dwindle as the game goes on. In shogi, however, the winning side gets more resources as they go along, resources that can be dropped in almost anywhere on the board at any time as the player sees fit.

That fact alone probably makes it a good thing most pieces are weaker

by themselves

than in western chess. Even the promoted rook and promoted bishop, the most mobile pieces, don’t quite match up to a western queen.

“So the question becomes,” Grue thought aloud, “Who can we beat in an indirect confrontation, capture and control?”

I’ve already given my thoughts on that, but maybe Bonesaw is worth considering too, though I’m not sure how useful she’d be as a controlled piece.

Mannequin is right out, not because I don’t think they can beat him, but because there’s no telling if Regent’s power would work on him.

And then there’s Burnscar. I think they could take her, and her power might lend itself well to their needs.

“Jack, Bonesaw-“ I said.

Grue shook his head.  “They know they’re vulnerable.  Either they’ll be watching their backs or the others will watch their backs for them.”

Fair.

Regent said, “Siberian is out, and while we might theoretically be able to catch and contain Crawler or Mannequin, I dunno if we could keep them still long enough for me to use my power on them.  If I can.  Their bodies are different.”

Yeah, I highly doubt Mannequin would work. I didn’t consider it for Crawler, but with the changes to his physiology, who knows.

I counted the enemies off on one hand, “Leaving Cherish-“

Regent shook his head, “She knows me, has measures in place.”

Yeeah. The bomb is an issue. They’d need to find out what the phone number is first.

“Burnscar and Shatterbird,” I finished.

“The bishops,” Trickster said.

Burnscar’s probably the easier of the two to catch, though the teleportation complicates things. Shatterbird would be good for offensive power, but in terms of what Regent would have at his disposal and in terms of what the Slaughterhouse wouldn’t.

A thing I’ve been meaning to say since the board game analogy started:

Being similar in composition to a chess team is actually really good for the Slaughterhouse. One of the reasons chess is such an interesting game is the fact that both players are playing with a really well-balanced set of pieces that work well as a team. The developers of western chess movesets and rules knew what they were doing.

What I think might be the Nine’s weakness is not working all that well as a team, though.

“I always preferred Go,” Trickster said, “But Go is about territory, give and take, less about aggression than an educational sparring match between two master swordsmen, each walking away with a new kernel of knowledge.

Hm. I think to play Go against the Slaughterhouse, you’re going to need more pieces.

Go applies more to taking over the city than it does to this scenario.”

Yeah, it does seem that way.

“Shogi?” Noelle suggested.

Shogi is basically just like international chess but with a couple of the pieces moving slightly differently, more complicated promotion rules, and the ability to take control of captured pieces. It’s too similar to what the Slaughterhouse are expecting and the biggest difference – pieces changing sides when captured – doesn’t apply unless Regent gets some time in private with them. And even then, the Slaughterhouse have two members who can do the same.

Shogi.  I got her meaning almost immediately, and I wasn’t alone. Tattletale, the Travelers and I all looked at Regent.

To do that, you need to capture at least one Slaughterhouse member first. That’s not going to be easy, but if you can pull it off, it might just be the key to success against the rest of them.

Cherish is the greatest threat against this tactic, being able to counter the control. Maybe that means she should be the target. She can’t do anything against Alec with her power, either, making it possible for him to be near her long enough to take full control.

After her, I suppose Jack would be the best target, but even if he is the weakest of them, he’s smart, and if taking him out – checkmate – is the main goal, then I doubt that’s going to be the first step on the way.

If Tattletale was sitting next to me, I would have kicked her under the table.

Better not kick in that direction right now. Not only would she hit the wrong person, but the person she’d hit would be Bitch.

Noelle suddenly perked up, saying, “They want to hunt.  They’re predators.”

“Okay, how can we use that?” Trickster leaned forward to look at the screen.

…is she talking from experience as a “monster”?

“They want to be the predators, we make them prey,” Noelle said.  She was looking more animated again.

Sooo…

That implies hunting them down. Coming to them instead of letting them come to the Undertravelers.

That does give an element of surprise and preparation advantage, but I thought we were trying to avoid direct combat altogether. Hunting traps?

“Not sure that’s possible, but keep going.”

“It’s not possible because, um.  You described them like they’re chess pieces, and we’re thinking in terms of a chess game.  What if we changed the game?”

Okay, so I wasn’t expecting Wildbow to actually spell this out when I made the analogy to playing backgammon instead, but here we are.

I kinda wish I’d gone with my urge to use checkers instead. It’s played on the same board and can be merged with chess without much difficulty (one side has checkers pieces and wins by checkmating the king, the other side has chess pieces and wins by capturing all the checkers pieces), weakening the analogy’s focus on throwing the opponent’s assumptions out the window, but at least it’s a game I actually know how to play. It’d be easier to make further references to it.

“They want their ninth member,” I said.

“Right.”

“They want to hurt, scare and kill people,” Tattletale put in her two cents.

Ah, yes, that too.

“Why?”

“Reputation, entertainment,” Tattletale said, “These guys are monsters, and pretty much anyone who watches T.V., surfs the web, or reads the papers knows it.”

Yeah, they haven’t exactly made a secret out of what they are.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye.  Noelle’s expression shifted all at once from being animated and engaged to the same look she’d worn when the webcam feed first went live.

…uh oh. Bad word to use around someone who is a) a Slaughterhouse nominee in presumably a less ironic sense than Alec, and b) kinda turning into a monster in the more primal sense.

Disinterested, hurt, hopeless.

She’d been scouted.  Unlike Regent, it hadn’t been to mess with her.  It had been because a freak like Crawler legitimately thought she was one of them.

Yep. As far as we know, anyway – it’s not like Crawler got a chance to talk about it.

“Tattletale say that?” Noelle asked.

That’s not really Tattle’s role, though she is good at educated guesswork.

“Coil did,” Trickster answered.

Odd.  So Noelle was staying with Coil, but she didn’t know about Dinah?  Another secret or white lie from her team?

Yeeah, they may not want to tell her that there’s someone around who can give her the precise odds of fixing whatever is happening to her, and more importantly, that the odds are low.

“I can’t help but think of the Desecrated Monk scenario,” Noelle said.  I saw Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic all nodding.

Is that like a codename for a specific type of situation they’ve trained for?

Desecrated Monk sounds like it refers to someone who can’t or won’t fight back with violence against the people who attacked them and their home.

When I turned to my team, they looked as confused as I was.  Was this Desecrated Monk someone the Travelers had gone up against at some point before they came to Brockton Bay?

I suppose it’s not the stupidest hero name, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think she’d say “scenario” in that case.

“Go on,” Trickster encouraged her.

“The rules are unfair.  Half of our opponents are pretty blatantly cheating.  But we have to deal with them anyways.  So either we cheat back-“

Or we knock the board over and refuse to play?

“Which we can’t.”

“Or you guys handle it the way we did it before.  You don’t fight the way they want to fight.”

The Slaughterhouse members are like a set of chess pieces.

So let’s play backgammon.

In other words, let’s get back to chess analysis with Trickster!

Though he’s probably done now.