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Electoral College Go explores how the ancient game of Go changes when not every point on the board is equal (just like American votes). Players compete not over individual points, but the states of the U.S., where the player controls more intersections will earn all of the state’s points.
The unique board shape adds some new tactics to the game, but what I find the most interesting about the game is how drastically different the move order can feel from normal Go.
When I play Go, I have a strong intuition about the “correct” flow of a game just from watching how so many games have played out. Players generally move from the corners, to the sides, and then to the center, blocking out large areas before finally settling all the exact borders in the endgame. In Electoral College Go, sometimes a move on the edge of the board or on a dame point is vital for flipping an entire state from one player to the other, and so it gets played much earlier than one would normally expect. It’s often a challenge to even spot these moves (let alone evaluate them) once our brains have trained so long on typical Go that we begin to subconsciously ignore these sorts of moves during the middle-game.
I find it very fun to be challenged on these fundamental aspects of one’s knowledge. Will you be able to prove that you have a deep understanding of Go tactics, or have you become too reliant on subconscious shortcuts to play anything but standard 19x19?