Mastering Cellblock

Deep within The Darigan Citadel lies a dungeon in which the warden tells his prisoners that if someone can beat him in a game of his own creation, he will set them free. Of course no one has quite yet achieved this...

The Basics of Cellblock

This portion will be explained assuming that you have not gotten past Master Vex for the first time yet. Cellblock is played on a board with a grid pattern that has four pieces in the center of the board. Two are yours and two are your opponent’s, forming a square. Yours are in the upper left-hand corner and lower right-hand corners of the square and your opponent’s in the upper right-hand corner and lower left-hand corners. Each piece takes up one space. You and your opponent alternate turns placing a piece each turn. You get the first turn. On your turn you can place a piece anywhere on the board that is adjacent to a piece already on the board (diagonally counts). Just click on the place where you want to put your piece and click the “make move” button underneath the picture of the board. When the new page comes, it should have your and your opponent's new pieces on it. Although it may look like your and your opponent's moves are made at the same time, your move comes and then your opponent goes. So remember that if you win on your turn, you don’t have to worry about your opponent’s next move. The object of a game of Cellblock is to get five of your pieces in a row vertically, horizontally, or diagonally before your opponent does. The only way for a game to be a draw is for the entire board to be filled. If a draw occurs, it counts as a loss.

While your mouse is over a valid space on the board, the space turns white. And when you click on the place you want your piece to go, the place will turn red. You and your opponent’s last moves have blue outlines.Not every computer has these colored spaces, though.

How a Tournament Works

The way Cellblock works is that there are eight different challengers you play in order of easiest to hardest. Once you beat a challenger you can move up to the next harder challenger. There are five prisoners, then two guards, then the warden and creator of Cellblock himself, Master Vex.To beat a challenger, you must beat him in the majority of the games you play against him. The harder the challenger, the more games you have to beat him in to go on to the next challenger. For instance, if you were playing a round against Clop, you would only have to beat him two out of three times, but if you were playing a round against Galgarrath, you would have to beat him four out of seven times. Once you beat Master Vex, you start again at Clop (the first challenger).

If in the middle of a round it becomes impossible for a player to win because of losing too many matches, the game ends and the other player is declared the winner. Such as if you had already beaten Clop two times and you hadn’t played the full three matches, you would be declared the winner (why waste time on completing all of the matches if you already know the outcome?). Defeating every challenger once is called a tournament.

You can challenge an opponent by clicking the button that says “challenge me” under the small picture of the challenger you are currently competing against at the top of the page. Or you can continue your game from before by clicking “continue your game!” When you begin a round of games with a challenger, you have to pay an amount of neopoints that varies depending on the difficulty of that challenger and the number of tournaments you’ve completed. If you win the majority of the rounds, you get four times the amount of neopoints that you spent to start the round! If you click on the “start a new game” button, a new game will begin and the last game will be considered lost. I highly discourage ever forfeiting your game.

A very good Cellblock player will fly through the challengers, getting more and more neopoints until they reach the five-thousand point daily limit. After that, you may still play for fun and practice but don’t earn neopoints for it. Obviously you don’t have to pay to start a round if you’re past your daily point limit either.

How the Amount of Tournaments You’ve Completed Affects the Game

After beating Master Vex (who is the last challenger) for the first time, you no longer have to place your pieces adjacent to an already placed piece. After your tenth time defeating Master Vex, the four pieces that start out in the center of the board disappear and stones appear in random spots throughout the board as obstacles. In addition to these changes of rules you also have to pay more and earn more for the games after the first, tenth, and twentieth tournaments.

Traps and Forks (This is where Cellblock gets Serious)

When playing Cellblock, it rarely happens that your opponent misses a spot on the board with four pieces lined up obviously in front of them. Cellblock is a game of deception and staying a step ahead of your opponent. A trap in Cellblock is an assortment of pieces that deceive your adversary and assures your victory through a series of moves. Maturing a trap is placing the last piece of a trap, completing it.

The simplest of the traps is just four pieces in a row with none on either side. If they block one end, you can win with the other end next turn. After you’ve placed the last piece of this your opponent can’t stop you unless they win with their very next move. Unfortunately, as your opponents get more challenging, they stop falling for these.

The next most difficult kind of trap is called a fork. A fork is when placing a piece makes you able to get four in a row (with no pieces on either side) next turn in two or more different places so whatever one they don’t block you can mature next turn. Remember, though, that there have to be enough empty spaces on the sides of the fork for it to work. As complicated as this seems, though, there are even more complicated ways of winning than forks, such as if you force your opponent to block your four-in-a-row, giving you time to mature your fork. But don’t get too cocky because no matter how foolproof your strategy is, it doesn’t matter if they win before your trap is completed

The Benefits of Playing Cellblock

Aside from earning neopoints from Cellblock there are other benefits that come with playing. You can:

• Earn a flashy new medal or trophy for your cabinet!
• Get a cool new avatar with Master Vex on it!

How to Get Practice

An easy way to get practice when you don’t have access to a computer or just want to get some practice before a particularly important game is to grab a checker board and play with a friend.

I hope you enjoyed learning about the magnificent game of Cellblock. I certainly enjoyed teaching you!

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