Board Games Studies 2007 (part 1: The Games)

Last week at St. Pölten, a small city near Vienna, it took place the 10th Board Games Studies Colloquium. It is a chance to meet several different people around board games (historians, inventors, collectors...). Here are some games that I found out there:

These first two are two games rescued from the Netherlands's patent office in the 80's by Fred Horn (a prolific game inventor, a jazz musician and a great guy). The first game (for 2 or 4 players) uses a Go-like rule to capture every group that's unable to move. The second uses hidden-information so that the special stone can move into the farthest cell (jumps over enemy stones flip them and make them friendly pieces).

This is an old Stratego-like game: 

This is a new edition of a card set designed by Descartes himself (!): 

A geometrical game where players have an equal set of pieces all with the same volume (48 units) and each piece cannot be adjacent to another piece of the same height or color and identical pieces must be placed differently (the picture shows an invalid position, both yellow pieces are placed in the same position). 

 This next one is a connection game called ConHex by Michail Antonow:

Patterns @ Conimbriga

Conimbriga is an archeologic site of an ancient Roman villa at the center of Portugal. Here are some photos and some of its interesting floor tilings.

CHOSEN CHESS

[by João Neto] In normal Chess you choose a piece, then you move it. In Chosen Chess, when it's your turn, you move the (previously chosen) piece, then you choose another piece (for the next move).

• In the first move White choose a (movable) piece, then Black do the same.
• In the subsequent moves players move the chosen piece (if possible), then choose a different piece.
• No Check, checkmate or en-passant.
  
• Castling is a King move.
• The player that captures the adversary King wins the game.