Wellington

Wellington is a 1985 game by Bruce Aslip, published by Aslip and Co.

The playing surface, called the town grid, has 100 squares. Each player owns 16 buildings: the dark buildings and the light buildings. The size of each building varies, containing from one to six squares. The number of buildings and their sizes are equal for both players. Wellington’s burgundy-colored Parliament is a neutral building that covers four squares. Each player also owns a Duke.

These are the pieces used with the game:

Rules

To begin playing, clear the town grid and separate the dark buildings and light buildings.

The first player places Parliament anywhere in the town grid. The other player then places his or her Duke in the town grid. The Duke may occupy either clear areas or a border, within two squares of an edge.

Each player, in turn, places buildings in the town grid.

Your objectives are:

1. Protect your Duke
2. Capture your opponent’s Duke
3. Capture your opponent’s buildings
4. Conquer territory

The corners are the most important parts of the town grid. You conquer territory by surrounding a corner of the town grid with your buildings. To surround a corner, your buildings must form an unbroken wall that is at least one square in thickness. Once you have conquered a corner, you own that corner for the rest of the game—unless your opponent captures it.

When you conquer a corner, remove your opponent’s captured buildings and Dukes from that corner and replace them with your own. If you capture a Duke in this way, you win the game.

Players alternate placing buildings one at a time in the town grid, following these rules:

• You may not place a building so that it overlaps another building, Duke, or Parliament.
• You may not place a building so that it extends beyond the borders of the grid.
• You may place a building in contact with another of your own buildings, but not with one of your opponent’s buildings.
• Buildings may touch the Parliament on any side.
• You may not move or remove any building once it has been placed.

Each player continues until all buildings have been placed or until one player cannot legally place a building on his or her turn.

If neither player can place another building, the game ends.

Goal. The object of Wellington is to place all of your buildings in the town grid while you block your opponent from doing the same. You win the game by capturing your opponent’s Duke, or by controlling the greatest number of territories.

• If you capture your opponent’s Duke, you automatically win. There is no need to add up the rest.
• If neither Duke has been captured by the end of the game, each player adds the total value of his or her remaining buildings and tallies the number of territories captured.
• Subtract the total of your opponent’s remaining buildings and territories from your own total. The difference is your score.
• The player with the lowest score wins the game of Wellington.

The previous text was taken from the official rules:

 

Wellington is similar to 1979's Cathedral, where an extra royal piece is included.

Queen Bee

Queen Bee is a 1974 game by Keith Budden, published at Clipper.

The game is played on the intersections of this hexagonal board:

Each player has one Queen, four Workers and three Warrior bees.

The rules:

• Initially player position their pieces on opposite board edges: the Queen is placed at one of the six markers, the Workers at the Queen's left and right, and the Warriors at the remaining intersections around the Queen's hexagon:

• On his turn, the player moves one friendly bee
• The Queen moves to an adjacent empty intersection
• The Worker moves exactly two intersections
  
• The Warrior moves exactly three intersections
• A bee cannot move forward and backward passing twice in the same intersection (one consequence is that players cannot pass their turns)
  
• The center of the board (the hive) can only be entered by a Queen; the hive is the only board position that is not an intersection
  
• Bees capture enemies by replacement, and cannot jump over other bees
• Captures can occur in any of the intersections within the bee's move range
  
• Wins the player that moves his Queen into the hive, or by capturing the adversary Queen

The game allows three or four players. In those situations, after a Queen is captured, the remaining bees of that army remain immobile and can be captured by the other players. Since in matches with 3+ players, some enemy bees will start very close together, the rules don't allow captures in the game's first turn.

Here's a review from Games & Puzzles:

The publisher did a rebranding in 1976, changing the game's theme to medieval Japan, and renaming it to Kendo (a Japanese martial art):

Here are the rules of Kendo (in German).

Discon

Discon is a 1969 uncredited game, published by Doppler Games.

The game is played on a 10x10 board, with four starting corners (the game is for two to four players),

 

There are 96 stones of four colors (16 ivory, 24 pink, 24 blue and 32 purple), plus 24 roofs, six of each labelled 1 to 4,

 

This is a scoring game, where players try to build stacks with as many points as possible. The roofs move like knights and collect different color pieces to make stacks (which can optionally travel with the roofs). There is a complex scoring table for players to account for their points, which is not the most elegant solution...

Here are the official rules:

You can read an extensive review of this game at BGG, I am not a number, I am a free man!, written by @srand user.

Gomoku Clones

Commercializing traditional games, which have no copyright, is at the same time less expensive because of the lack of copyright, but also a homage to the public commons and to old cultural traditions.

Gomoku is a traditional game with simple rules, and yet it is deep enough to be quite challenging and highly replayable. It's no wonder that so many games have been marketed based on the moku ludeme.

This post refers to some less known older games that are a plain rebranding of Gomoku.

Peg A Ro 

A 1920s game published in England. It comes with a 16x16 board and four sets of pieces (around 27 pegs per color) so that it can be played between two and four players.

Spoil Five

Published also in the 1920s by Chad Valley Co.

This game comes with a 14x11 board and with four colors. Each player only gets 16 pieces for each color, which is not enough to play the game (even if each player uses two colors). I wonder if even a 4 in-a-row would be easy to do in a match with four players.

Notice that the last suggested game in this ruleset in none other than the Game of NIM (in the misère version), one of the seminal games that started Combinatorial Game Theory.

Peg'ity

Another clone is Peg'ity from 1925, from Parker Brothers,

 

In the 1953 edition, there is the following supplement with three extra games/puzzles:

This last one is again misère NIM.

Quintro

Quintro is a 1935 version of Gomoku from Spear's Games.

Quinio

Quinio is a 1956 uncredited Gomoku game, published by Jumbo:

And a bonus, 1957's Chek-ro which is Pente before Pente:

 

Line-Ups

Line-Ups is a 1979 game by Phil Orbanes, published at GAMES magazine #11.

The rules came with two 12x12 boards to be played in the magazine itself using pencils (it was part of the recurring Pencilwise section).

Line-Ups is thus a pencil and paper game, and a curious mix of moku and scoring ludemes.