Jonathan Kandell
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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I have played Dvonn about five times, and love it. The moves are excruciating. My question: Given the small, thin board, the small number of opening moves, and the diminishing number of moveable stacks, does the game wear out its welcome with repeated plays? Compared to games like chess and go, it just seems one would quickly learn what works and doesn't. Or does it remain complex?
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Alistair Stafford
New Zealand
Auckland
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Not at all. I have played this almost 40 times and after every game I think "why don't I play this more"
There is lots to be discovered in this game and with the variable set up there are always new ways to go about your goal.
Keep at it you'll start to see new patterns and ways of manipulating the board. They key is to keep yourself mobile whilst limiting your opponent. Pulling off a move from one side of the board to the other with a large stack and wiping away a pile of your opponents pieces is a great feeling.
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Jeremy Yoder
United States
Sioux Falls
South Dakota
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On the contrary, I've played Dvonn with the same guy about 60 times in the past 3 months, and we've both found it only gets better with age.
However, we also play with a chess timer, which adds an adrenaline rush as each of us only has a few minutes for our entire game. With that aspect, and since neither of us had ever played before, it's been a fun experience to progress together.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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I'll throw in a voice of 'mmmmmidunno'. I've found DVONN neither to significantly increase in complexity nor to increase in satisfaction from playing it. In setting up, the basic guiding principle seems to be spread out as you don't want to be forced to move on top of your own stones; only when it means cutting off a bunch of stones from the orange ones is such a move defensible. I've found the game to be very tactical so that planning grand strategies from the outset is very difficult; only when the board begins to clear up is when I feel I am able to force certain patterns onto the board. But by then the game may already be lost: I get the feeling that in a fairly large number of cases winning or loosing is decided in the middle of the game, where in my opinion the game can still go either way. But when the dust clears and there's about a dozen stacks left, I know I'm going to win or loose (which inevitably happens).
DVONN to me appears to be a game of 'play and find out'—I don't really know of any guiding principle which could aid me in making moves (think '2 eyes is good' in Go here). The result is that DVONN doesn't come to my table often. I usually play a row of three games, and then the game is stored away again.
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Patrick Cherlet
United Kingdom
Sevenoaks
Kent
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Just a few additional thoughts:
1. the position of the Dvonn pieces and the pattern of the other pieces at the end of the setup phase can change the feel of the game quite a bit
2. tactics are of course very important in Dvonn, but it seems to me that the game is more about a general sense of pattern. You kind of know when positionally things are beginning to go your way, but tactical surprises often throw an interesting spanner in the wheels.
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Mathijs Booden
Netherlands
Leiden
Unspecified
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I have played several 100s of Dvonn matches online (on Little Golem) and am still not bored. I generally play 10 to 20 parallel games and make my moves a couple of times per day, taking a couple of seconds per move. I suppose I have internalized a set of rules of thumb for the set-up and early game. Come the mid-game, one has to start counting the possibilities, which is the tricky part. If you mess up the mid-game the end-game just plays itself out really.
Having played a lot of matches, I can say that some rules of thumb can get you a long way, but not all the way. Once the first few moves are made (at the very latest), you have to look carefully at what viable ways to victory their are. I guess this point is where I falter semi-consistently against the really good players, online anyway, which sort of proves that in Dvonn, skill certainly matters even after a lot of games. I'd like to play more timed real-life games in a concentration-inducing setting and see if I do better, not very likely to happen though 
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Francis Bergeron
Canada
Québec
Québec
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Dvonn is a reeeeaaaal gem!!! i have no more than 80 games played and enjoyed every move on every game i played.
The fact that there's no opening moves like those in chess is a great plus, you don't have to memorize opening pattern(boring!!!) here you play a different game each time.
The more you'll play, you'll discover that each move count, don't take them to lightly or a fierce opponent will wash you out the board... never play a move without a goal just to see what will happen.
Through the tactic, there's more strategies(long term) play than one could think,
Before doing your first move and the later, look at the entire board to see the hotspot; like where you can be disconnected too early, the fight for the red pieces(but no need to always rush at them), playing pieces to free some other that are important. There's a lot of action among all those pieces.
There's so much to look at on a Dvonn board, it's a "rich experience" each time i play... don't put this game aside, it's one of the better abstract out there(for me) Since i've discovered Dvonn, chess became boring( and i have loved them for a long time).
So the short answer to your question...Dvonn is far to get boring with repeated play!!
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Alain Renaud
Canada
Québec
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Played over 2,000 online on both littlegolem and mostly boiteajeux and it's still the game that get me back to those site. I like to play with random setting. it keeps the game fresh. I guess with pawn placement I would start to do always the same kind of patterns and it would maybe be less interesting... for me at least.
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Mikko Saari
Finland
http://www.lautapeliopas.fi/ - the best Finnish board game resource!
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I've played about ~150 games, most of them at Little Golem and finally I've decided to give up the game. I'm still not any wiser on the setup phase and I've found the actual play of the game more work than enjoyment. Dvonn is fairly heavy with the advance calculation of moves, and I don't really like that (which is why I prefer Go to Chess).
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Joe Gola
United States
Redding
Connecticut
Eleven.
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Hell no. I've played more than sixty games on littlegolem.net, and even if I'm burned out on playing online (I hate wondering if I'm playing against a homemade AI), I still love playing face-to-face. There's tons of stuff to learn, and the game always has a lot of surprise and drama.
I disagree with some of the other posts, though—the setup is an important part of the game.
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United States
Norwood
Massachusetts
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JYoder wrote:
On the contrary, I've played Dvonn with the same guy about 60 times in the past 3 months, and we've both found it only gets better with age.
However, we also play with a chess timer, which adds an adrenaline rush as each of us only has a few minutes for our entire game. With that aspect, and since neither of us had ever played before, it's been a fun experience to progress together.
If I may ask, what time control do you use? I would imagine something along the lines of blitz?
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Posted Sun Apr 25, 2010 1:18 am
