The clockworks study three lost duels

Six instincts learned playing Kestrel live, taught to the automatons.
Bank guard: enemy gold banked at home is a scoreboard anyone can rob —
an empty-handed raider within two of a stocked bank pulls the walker
home (the predicate reads only enemy positions, the thief-chase
shuttle lesson), and pathDenial blockades the raider's road.
Repossession: the bot's own treasure banked by an enemy one delivery
from winning becomes a march goal, and the underfoot grab learns the
owner exception. Infrastructure: holding DIMENSIONAL WARP near home
in the early rounds, the bot anchors one mouth at its doorstep and
one beside the richest distant gold — the home-anchored superhighway
that won its teacher two games. Turn theft: a carrier one delivery
from winning eats LIGHTNING BLAST's stun over any bigger point total.
The teleport delivery: carrying with home a blink away but farther by
boot, it jumps the ambush and drops next command. Last-counter
thrift: a lone remaining counteraction at healthy life waits for
something big. A/B vs the prior brain across 100 mirrors: parity
(44-52, historical noise band) — the patterns are anti-human, and
mirrors don't play like humans. Three scenario tests pin the rungs;
287 tests; 23 ledgers verified.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015RCWSTnb1KYTPyL4GmhGnF

packages/engine/src/game.ts

@@ -3493,7 +3493,7 @@ function walkingDistance(state: GameState, from: Cell, to: Cell): number {
 }
 
 /** BFS steps between cells ignoring walls (teleport distance). */
-function wallIgnoringDistance(board: AssembledBoard, from: Cell, to: Cell): number {
+export function wallIgnoringDistance(board: AssembledBoard, from: Cell, to: Cell): number {
   if (cellKey(from) === cellKey(to)) return 0;
   const seen = new Map<string, number>([[cellKey(from), 0]]);
   const queue: Cell[] = [from];