War

This game is based on the Blotto game in game theory(you may have come across a version of it if you've seen FiveThirtyEight's "Battle for Riddler Nation" events), with an extra mechanic surrounding raising troops added in order to make the game fun to play over multiple rounds.

• This game has 6 players, and will have 7 rounds.
• Each player starts with 300 regular drones, and 50 special drones. Regular drones can be used every round, while special drones can only be used once each in the game(think of them as self-destructing at the end of the round they are deployed).
• There is one central island(labelled 0), and 6 surrounding islands(labelled 1 through 6), and the distant island(labelled 7).
• For each 2 drones a player deploys to island 0 in a round, they are awarded an extra drone they can use in future rounds.
• For each of islands 1-6, in each round, players are ranked according to the number of drones they send to the island. A player who is ranked Nth on an island X is awarded X*(6-N) points.
• Island 7 is special - it is a colosseum, where players' drones fight to the death. All drones that are sent to island 7 each round will die(which is not the case for the other islands), and be removed from the game. Island 7 awards 50 points to the winner, and 0 points to everybody else.
• There is a final face-off between the combined remaining armies of the players and the dealer. The dealer's army size is fixed at 13000 drones.
• If the dealer's army is larger than the sum total of all the players' armies, they are the sole winner. Otherwise, the player(s) with the most points is(are) the sole winner(s).
• If players fail to send me an action for a round, their actions will default to all their drones doing nothing for the round.
• The individual scores and total drone count at the end of each round are published publicly.
• Private communication is allowed. Feel free to conspire to your heart's content! However, in online versions, sharing screenshots of communications with the dealer is not allowed.

When I ran this game with friends, the players cleared the 13000 drone check, meaning one of them won. There was a fair amount of jostling on the leaderboard, keeping things interesting.