The complete solution to this game is harder than it looks, due to complications when there are several numbers $1$ present; I claim the following is a complete list of the "Bob" games, those that can be won by the second player to move. To justify, I will indicate for each case a strategy for Bob, countering any move by Alice by another move leading to a simpler "Bob" game.
I will write game position as partitions, weakly decreasing sequences of nonnegative integers (order clearly does not matter for the game). Entries present a number of times are indicated by exponents in parentheses, so $(3,1^{(4)})$ designates $(3,1,1,1,1)$. Moves are of type "decrease" (type 1 in the question) or "merge" (type 2); a decrease from $1$ to $0$ will be called a removal.
Bob-games are:
- $(0)$ and $(2)$
- $(a_1,\ldots,a_n,1^{(2k)})$ where $k\geq0$, $n\geq1$, $a_n\geq2$, $(a_1,\ldots,a_n)\neq(2)$, and $a_1+\cdots+a_n+n-1$ is even. Strategy: counter a removal of one of the numbers $1$ by another such removal; a merge of a $1$ and an $a_i$ by another merge of a $1$ into $a_i$; a merge of two entries $1$ by a merge of the resulting $2$ into one of the $a_i$; a decrease of an $a_i$ from $2$ to $1$ by a merge of the resulting $1$ into another $a_j$; any other decrease of an $a_i$ or a merge of an $a_i$ and $a_j$ by the merge of two entries $1$ if possible ($k\geq1$) or else merge an $a_i$ and $a_j$ if possible ($n\geq2$), or else decrease the unique remaining number making it even.
- (to be continued...)
Note that the minimal possibilities for $(a_1,\ldots,a_n)$ here are $(4)$, $(3,2)$, and $(2,2,2)$. Anything that can be moved into a Bob-game is an Alice-game; this applies to any $(a_1,\ldots,a_n,1^{(2k+1)})$ where $k\geq0$, $n\geq1$, $a_n\geq2$, $(a_1,\ldots,a_n)\neq(2)$ (either remove or merge a $1$ so as to leave $a_1+\cdots+a_n+n-1$ even), and to any $(a_1,\ldots,a_n,1^{(2k)})$ where $k\geq0$, $n\geq1$, $a_n\geq2$, and $a_1+\cdots+a_n+n-1$ odd (either merge two of the $a_i$ or two entries $1$, or if there was just an odd singleton, decrease it). All cases $(3,1^{(l)})$ and $(2,2,1^{(l)})$ are covered by this, in a manner depending on the parity of $l$. It remains to classify the configurations $(2,1^{(l)})$ and $(1^{(l)})$. Moving outside this remaining collection always gives some Alice-game $(3,1^{(l)})$ or $(2,2,1^{(l)})$, which are losing moves that can be ignored. Then we complete our list of Bob-games with:
- $(1^{(3k)})$ and $(2,1^{(3k)})$ with $k>0$. Bob wins game $(1,1,1)$ by moving to $(2)$ in all cases. Similarly he wins other games $(1^{(3k)})$ by moving to $(2,1^{(3k-3)})$ in all cases. Finally Bob wins $(2,1^{(3k)})$ by moving to $(1^{(3k)})$ (unless Alice merges, but this also loses as we already saw).