Worm Derby

Players	2-4
Length	30-40 mins
Equipment Required	single standard piecepack
Designer	Mark A. Biggar
Version	3.2
Version Date	2004-08
License	Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004 by Mark A. Biggar under the GNU free doc license , dual-licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Description

A game of racing worms through a field of obstacles. Each worm is a line of piecepack coins that moves by moving coins from one end of the worm to the other. The worm movement is borrowed from a German game called "Wurmeln" by Alex Randolph, but no other details are the same.

This game requires a playing surface of about 3x5 feet.

Rules

https://ludism.org/piecepack/org/rules/WormDerby.pdf (local copy)
https://web.archive.org/web/2016/http://www.piecepack.org/rules/WormDerby.pdf (original copy)
WormDerbyTextVersion

Design Notes

I had seen about 5 minutes of a game of Wurmeln being played about 18 months before I wrote up this game, but didn't remember that until several months later.
I was playing around with a set of coins and kind of reinvented the move a coin end-to-end worm movement.
The first version didn't have the obstacles, just the start line and the turn pylon. The obstacles were added by accident during a playtest session, when one of my nephews built a wall with the unused tiles around his brother's run-away leader worm, saying "I've got to slow him down somehow."
The idea for moving obstacles was added several playtest session later.