Thanks for playing! I don't have a ranking in traditional Go, but after tens of hours playing this game I'd generally agree with your assessment.

One issue is that I think I made the small board too small. This makes it very easy for a monolithic group to dominate. The bot prefers to open right in the center, and I've generally found that to be strong.

I _think_ that playing on the big board gives some more variety to the strategy, but I haven't finished enough games yet to be sure. Playing really connected though seems to still be hard to beat. If players continue to get stronger and play big board games it will be interesting to see how the meta evolves.

I'm similar strength (4k ogs) and I had the same experience. I think the essential difference is the cross-cut in this game can produce 3 groups (a connection on the shorter axis remains), whereas it produces 4 in Go. That makes it possible to rampage across the board, cutting a weaker player to ribbons while staying in one big group. Fun game.