Matoca

Matoca is a 1973 game from publisher Alabe Products. Bruce Whitehill kndly sent me following scans of the game:

SAUCE

Played in a 5 hexhex board. 12 for the first turn. After that a turn is to place two stones, or three if the opponent's biggest group is bigger than the player's (recursively).   Passes are always legal instead of placements.

When the board is full, the recursively-largest connected group wins.

Sample game:

      ___OOO________XXX___
  1.  ..  i5      k3  f4
  2.  o3 l4 f6    h2 h6 k5
  3.  i3 o5 k7    h4 j4 g5
  4.  g7 i7 n6    d2  m7
  5.  n4 e5 l6    c5 l2 d2
  6.  b6  d6      n2 a5 l6
  7.  j6  j8      o7 f8 k9
  8.  h8  g9      b4 m3 m5
  9.  e7  d8      i9 p6 q5
 10.  j2  g3      f2 g1 i1
 11.  k1  e3      c3 m1 e1
 12.  c7 e9 p4    n8 m9

Final Position:

|    abcdefghijklmnopq    
|        x x x o x         1
|       x x x o x x        2
|      x o o o x x o       3
|     x x x x x o o o      4
|    x x o x o x x o x     5
|     o o o x o o o x      6
|      o o o o o x x       7
|       o x o o x x        8
|        o o x x x         9
|    abcdefghijklmnopq
 
Groups sizes:
Os: size 23, 5
Xs: size 23, 9  X wins

Notice the recursive aspect of the goal. This is a quite interesting idea to apply in games where it's not difficult to draw (and we like to avoid draws, of course).

Peg Show & Telka

Peg Chow is a board game fom 1938 published by Parker Bros and is a Halma-Chinese Checkers variant.

The board:

There is also a variant to be played in the same board called Telka:

Bruce Whitehill kindly sent me these rule sets and related information. Also check his website, The Big Game Hunter.

Wit Begint en Wint

Feed Horn sent me information about a 1986 game compendium written in Dutch, called "Wit Begint en Wint" (White moves and wins). Here's a pdf with photos of its pages. Most of the games are well-known but some are inventions of the author Marius van Leeuwen.

Here are the pages of his original games and a brief description for each:

Hexagon -- Every connection between 2 opposing (corners belong to both) edges generates a Win.

There is also a more difficult variant: 3 edges must be connected and the corners are neutral (fig.3).

This Game has more to do with HAVANNAH from Freeling than with HEX.

Capture -- Similar to Hasami SHogi but with no fixed start-position. First the Players put the stones to their wish on the Board and then the Players in their turn make an orthogonal move with 1 stone going to an adjacent square. Capture as in the figures.

Eieren Rapen -- This is a NIM-game. All eggs are covered with a Chip. Loser is the Player who, in his last turn, must take the Chip from the broken egg. In a Turn a Player takes, to his wish, as much Chips from an egg as he wants out of a Row or Column (not necessarily adjacent).

Langste Adem -- Start on the indicated ring. In a Turn place your next Chip adjacent to your last played Chip . Player who cannot play in his turn loses. This is like POINT-BLANK  or as a reverse (take away) like ISOLA.

Connection -- This is the Connection game, but with different board size and probably previous to the commercial McNamara's game from 1991. Of course 1960's Bridg-It predates both

Carre -- The goal is to make as much squares as possible out of 4 or 8 own pieces on the board. Squares cannot be orientated diagonally. This is a little bit similar to the game Pagode.

SABOTAGE MALTHUS

Initial setup:

  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy   
        . . . . . . .         1
       . . . . . . x .        2
      . . o . . . x . .       3
     . . . . . . . . . .      4
    . . . . . . . . . . .     5
   . . . . . . . . . . . .    6
  . x x . . . . . . . o o .   7
   . . . . . . . . . . . .    8
    . . . . . . . . . . .     9
     . . . . . . . . . .     10
      . . o . . . x . .      11
       . o . . . . x .       12
        . . . . . . .        13
  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy

The mover places stones of either colour on empty spaces; as many (unrestricted) per turn as he has groups size 2 or more.

The game ends when the board is full or both consecutively pass; the player with the largest connected group (recursively), wins.

Recursive scoring means that if both largest groups are equal, then it's the 2nd largest groups that decide the match (and so on, if they are also equal...)

Game Sample:

  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy     
       x x . . o x x         1.  j4  p12  (O started)
      . . o o o x x x        2.  f12 g13 q13
     . . o x x x x o o       3.  o11 c9  e9
    . . o o x o x o . .      4.  g1  i1  y7  x8
   . . o x x x o x o x x     5.  r4 s3 d6 t10 u11
  o o o o x x o o x o . o    6.  m7 o7 l6 l8  k5 k9
 . x x . o x x x o x o o x   7.  n5 o5 f6 i7 q7 h8 p8
  . . o o x x x o o x o x    8.  t2 m3 o3 l4 g11 h10 j10
   o o x x x o o . o o .     9.  lm2 s5 px6 m9 lpq10 k11 o13
    x x x x o x o o o .      10. i5 J2 H6  F8 O9
     x x o o x o x . o       11. o1 h4 g5 i14 u3
      x o . o . o x X        12. (more moves not recorded)
       x o . o o x .         13.
  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz#:-

O: 2 groups     largest is 34
X: 7 groups     largest is 37


O resigned in this position, since he can only play two stones per turn (against 7 stones from X), but he would have needed three stones so that his largest group would also consist of 37 stones. If that happenend, O would win because he has the 2nd largest group.

Pontoons

Pontoons is a 1870 game published by John Jaques. Fred Horn was able to found the ruleset: