Jeux des Grandes Manoeuvres

Jeux des Grandes Manoeuvres is another game found at the Flicker account of patricia m:

photo by patricia m

Each player has five pieces of infantry, four pieces of cavalry, and one piece of artillery.

Rules:

• Initially, each player places his army on his side of the board: eight pieces in the first row, two in the second row. The cannon must be at the first row.
• At each turn, each player moves one friendly piece:
• An infantry can move one square sideways or forward (includes diagonals)
  
• A cavalry moves two squares, without jumping over friendly pieces
  
• The cannon captures enemy pieces in its line of sight, vertically or horizontally
• [regarding captures, read the next two paragraphs]
• Wins the player that captures or immobilizes the adversary army.
  

The text mentions that this game is similar to Checkers (le jeu de dames) and repeats this idea: capture tous les pions qui sont séparés, i.e, captures all pieces that are separated. This means, in my opinion, that the text describes Checkers-like capture, i.e., a jump over an enemy piece, landing on the immediate next empty square.

The cannon would function like an extended cavalry. Thematically, it makes sense for the cannon not to move next to its captured target but staying in the same place. However, the rules say nothing about it. Also, they don't mention how a Cannon moves. Again, it would make sense that it would move like infantry units.

The original text in French:

Ce jeu se joue à deux. Chaque joueur dispose à sa guise, sur chacune des cases du bas du damier qui se trouve en face de lui, ses troupes respectives. (Comme il n'y a que huit cases et qu'il y a dix pions, il place en éclaireurs, c'est-à-dire un rang en avant, soit de l'infanterie, soit de la cavalerie, l'artillerie devant toujours, au début du jeu, être placée en dernière ligne). À tour de rôle, chaque joueur fait ensuite évoluer ses régiments en ne remuant à chaque coup qu’un seul d’entre eux.  

L'infanterie (représentée par une petite tête de soldat) avance dans tous les sens, mais ne peut pas reculer et ne va que d'une case à l'autre.  
La cavalerie (représentée par une tête de cheval) avance de deux en deux cases sans pouvoir toutefois sauter par-dessus un régiment de sa couleur.  
L’artillerie (un petit canon) capture tous les pions qui sont séparés et qui se trouvent dans sa ligne de tir, soit horizontale, soit verticale.  

Lorsqu’un régiment d’infanterie rencontrera un régiment ennemi qui sera séparé des autres, il pourra le capturer ; de même, la cavalerie capturera un régiment ennemi séparé de deux cases et isolé, et l’artillerie prendra un régiment, quel qu’il soit, d’un bout à l’autre du damier, pourvu qu’il soit séparé des autres.  

En un mot, sauf la différence de marche, le jeu se jouera comme le jeu de dames, et celui des joueurs qui aura pris tous les régiments de son adversaire ou les aura immobilisés sera déclaré vainqueur.

Awithlaknakwe

Awithlaknakwe, aka,  The Stone Warriors, is a traditional board game played by the Zuni in the area of New Mexico. The game was mentioned by Stewart Culin in his book about traditional games from Native American tribes [1].

The game is played on this 12x12 board, with extra slots to place the player's six pieces (for two or four players):

The rules, as described by Culin, are not completely specified:

• Pieces move one step diagonally forward
  
• Captures are custodian: if a piece moves into a square, forming a line of friend-enemy-friend pieces, the enemy piece is captured [the capture is not said to be diagonally, orthogonally, or both]
  
• In the first capture, the player replaces the captured piece by a 'priest', i.e., a piece that moves like the Chess-king (except it still cannot move backwards)
  
•  Wins the player that first moves his [remaining?] pieces to the adversary home

Some reconstructions also include the number of captured pieces (by adding some scoring into the winning condition). However, it seems to be enough to consider the race element. Letting a piece be captured can be seen as a sacrifice to gain tempo, by having less pieces to move into the enemy's home base.

[1] Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indians, University of California Libraries (1907)

Hexagonia

Hexagonia is one of the first two hexagonal Chess in the literature^(*), c.1860. It was published by Jaques & Son, and its author is possibly J. W. Smith [1].

A new game for two players, played on a board divided into hexagons. Each player had fourteen pieces, representing infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and one principal piece, the King. The various pieces have certain moves on the board analogous to those of a real army, and the game is won by the player who first succeeds in placing his King (without liability to capture) on the central hexagon.

In Cazaux and Knowlton's A World of Chess, [2], the game is described. Each army is composed of one King, two Cannons, four Knights and eight Pawns. However, it is not known how the pieces moved. The book also refers that this game appears to have been invented, some years earlier, in New Zealand.

The book also includes the following quote about the game (page 377):

The last game which we have to notice is undoubtedly the most scientific of the lot, and somewhat resembles chess. It is called" Hexagonia," and is published by Mr. Jaques, of Hatton Garden. The board is in the shape of a hexagon, and contains hexagonal figures, painted red, blue, or white. Two play at this game. To each combatant is given a king, four knights, and two pieces in the shape of cannon, called artillery, and eight pawns, or pieces of infantry. Each piece has a different mode of moving, and can capture an enemy; and the object is to place the king on a gold square in the centre of the board. This sovereign can never be taken, but can be checked as in chess. The reader will gather fom this that much head-work and tact can be brought into play in this game, and that a knowledge of chess is often highly advantageous. We have endeavoured somewhat briefly to state the chief points of the new in-door games. We feel sure that they are varied enough to please the tastes of everybody, and we sincerely hope that our youngfiends may enjoy many a pleasant hour in the enjoyment of the intricate manoeuvres that these games involve" (Edmund Routledge, "The New Winter In-door Games," Routledge's Every Boy's Annual, an Entertaining Miscellany of Original Literature, George Routledge and Sons, 1866, New York, p. 35)

Pritchard's book, [3], also refers to the game: 

Hexagonia (Proprietary game, John Jaques and Son). Published in 1860 according to van der Linde, and allegedly awarded two prize medals in 1862, the game was in fact published on 23 September 1864 and registered at Stationers’ Hall the following January. 127-cell hexagonal board, central cell distinguished. Each player has 1 x King, 2 x Cannon (artillery), 4 x Knight (cavalry), 8 x Pawn (infantry). The moves of the pieces are not recorded. The object was to get one’s K safely to the central cell.

About the piece's moves. The King, Knight and Pawn moves are directly translated to hexagonal boards. The Cannon however could have been like a Rook, sliding rows of hexes, or like Bishops sliding thru diagonals, which might explain the use of three colors in the Hexagonia board (since it makes it easier to follow these diagonals). Both hypotheses for the Cannon would be stronger than the Knight's, which is compatible with their smaller number (two) compared to the Knights' (four). However, this is just speculation.

Since the game's goal is not to capture or stalemate the enemy King, it's arguably not a chess variant, but most of Chess themes are here, nonetheless. The first known hexagonal Chess with checkmate was 1910's Mars by M. van Leeuwen and published by F. H. Ayres.
______

(*) the other early Hexagonal Chess (also without checkmate) was designed by Thomas Hanmer Croughton, c.1853.

[1] Michael Thompson, Hexagonia, https://michaelthomson.org/game/hexagonia
[2] Jean-Louis Cazaux, Rick Knowlton - A World of Chess (2017)
[3] David Pritchard's The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants (2007)

Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société

The Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société (International Contest of Designers of Society Games) is an annual event organized by the Centre Ludique de Boulogne-Billancourt. The event started in 1977 and still occurs nowadays.

There are many awarded games (check their archive), and some became quite well known, namely Abalone, Quarto, Gygès, and Quits. Unfortunately, there is almost no information available about most of the board and rules of the submitted games over the years, including the awarded games!

Of the few there are board and rules available (in French), these seem to be within the blog's interests:

• Alpha, rules, GaalN (2001)
  
• Gadis, rules, Gérald Saiveau (1987)
  
• Court-circuit, rules, Max Gerchambeau (1983)
  
• Palanquée, rules, Ludovic Robillard (1988)
  
• Tchag, rules, Jean Georges (2003)
  
• Tor, rules, Alain Couchot, Bernard Klein (1996)
  

Of the ones where the board is known but not the rules:

• Dooble, Jean-Luc Hipeau (2000)
  
• Joséphine, Philippe Battesti (1999)
  
• Le Labyrinthe, Claude Fagret (1986)
  
• Pionmor, Bernard Tavitian (2000)
  

There are lots of other games in their archive without online information.

Spectrum

Spectrum is an uncredited 1975 game published by Intellect Games.

I was unable to find the entire ruleset and tried to reconstruct the game rules from the available information (if anyone have them, please let me know).

The game is played on a 10x10 board, with sets of six red and violet pieces, 16 orange and blue pieces, and (probably) 28 green and yellow pieces, for a total of 100 pieces. One player owns the red, orange and yellow pieces, while the other owns the green, blue and violet pieces.

The game starts with both players placing, in alternate fashion, their six red and six violet pieces in the board. These pieces must not be adjacent to each other.

Then each player, on her turn, drops one friendly piece on an empty square provided that it is only adjacent to pieces of adjacent colors in the color spectrum:

red ↔ orange ↔ yellow ↔ green ↔ blue ↔ violet

I'm assuming that a player passes if she has no legal moves; and the match ends after two consecutive passes.
 
Wins the player with more placed stones; or if both players have an equal number, the match is a draw.

Ralf Gering said about this game: The game appears to be flawed because the final scores are always very close (+/- 1). In fact it seems that the best the second player can achieve is a draw. Maybe the game can be fixed by multiplying the number of tiles of the remaining colors. The player with the smaller product wins.

Atrio

Atrio is a 2000 game from Christian Gibon, published at LM Créations and Murmel Spielwerkstatt und Verlag AG.

The game is played on the following board (I was unable to find the initial setup),

Each player starts with three marbles, two regular and one special.

• The regular marbles can move one space in each direction (orthogonal or diagonal)
• The special marbles can move one or two spaces in the same directions

The goal is to place your marbles inside the center 9x9 area (inside the interior circle), or else to push out one enemy marble out of the board (outside the exterior circle).

If the moving marble is adjacent, in the moving direction, to an enemy marble, it will push the enemy marble. This is valid only if all spaces where the pieces move thru are previously unoccupied. The Ko rule applies, the next player cannot use the same pushed marble on the opposite direction of the previous move.

Diu Fang

Diu Fang is a Chinese traditional game, apparently from the Central Asia region. In China it is known as square chess, game of squares, or playing squares (fang means square).

The game is played on a board with 7x7 or 7x8 intersections (but there are other sizes depending on the region),

The rules as stated by Olli Salmi:

• Each player has enough stones to fill half the intersections.
• The board starts empty and each player, in his turn, drops one friendly piece on an empty intersection. 
• When a player has four pieces making the corners of a square, he captures an enemy piece from the board. However, any piece forming a square cannot be captured.
• When all pieces are placed, pieces start moving to any adjacent empty intersection. Moves are mandatory, even if it means unmaking a square.
  
• Wins the player that captures all enemy pieces.

A Chinese text translation (from the previous link) states:

[...] The goal is to form a "fang" (square) by occupying one square of the board, which allows the player to capture one of the opponent's pieces. [...] Once all the pieces are placed, each player removes one of the opponent's pieces and begins moving their pieces. The objective remains to form squares and capture the opponent's pieces. Players can also dismantle and reform their existing squares to capture more pieces. The game ends when one player loses all their pieces, resulting in a loss.

"Diu Fang" has two variations: "Wei Fang" (aggressive strategy) and "Tian Fang" (peaceful strategy). In Tian Fang, players agree not to aggressively encircle the opponent's pieces, making the gameplay less confrontational and more harmonious compared to Wei Fang, which is more competitive and intense.

It is not stated if it is possible to form squares with 45º or other angles.

The game is reminiscent of Nine Men Morris and Alquerque (some boards have diagonal connections). It seems to have the same «win strategy», as in Morris, that allows the alternate movement of making and unmaking a square, thus capturing a piece in every two consecutive turns.

Details about this game (or family of games) are also described by Shimizu et al. in [1].

it is possible to note the diagonal lines at the board's middle

The authors state, besides the previous rules:

• The first stone must be placed at the middle (assuming a 7x7 board)
• "The players take turns in placing stones on the points of intersection of the lines, with the aim of creating a square around a field, while at the same time preventing their opponent from doing so."
  
• "The players take turns in taking a stone of the opponent which is not part of a square off the board and then moving one stone vertically or horizontally from a neighbouring point to the point left vacant by the removed stone. When a player manages to create a square of four pieces of his own he is allowed to remove an opponent’s piece from the board. This is repeated again and again. So a player aims to create squares himself, as squares of four stones are safe and no stone can be taken from it." This paragraph seems to mix two different rules. Each piece move means unconditionally removing an enemy piece. Then, an extra capture is possible after a new square if made. This would make for a much faster game.
  

The Ludii portal has some reconstructions that can be played (search for Fang).

In the main Fang variant, Ludii ruleset mainly follows [1]:

• 7x7 board, with diagonals in the square formed by the central 3x3 lines. 24 pieces per player. 
• Black plays first. Players alternate turns placing a piece on one of the empty spots on the board. 
• The first stone must be placed in the central spot. 
• They attempt to orthogonally surround an empty point with four of their pieces, making a square. 
• When all of the pieces are placed, players alternate turns removing one of their opponent's pieces from the board. They then move one of their pieces along the lines of the board to the place left vacant by the piece they removed. 
• When a player makes a new square, they may remove another of the opponent's pieces from the board. Pieces that are in a square around an empty point may not be captured, and captures are not made in the placement phase. 
• The player who captures all of the opponent's pieces wins.

This surrounding of an empty intersection does not appear at [1], which just says creating a square around a field. Anyway, this rule implies 45º angle squares. And this ruleset does not refer to any other type of square. So perhaps Salmi's description skips this detail, which seems probable to me. Using different shapes of squares feels too modern, and more typical of commercial games like Hip, Quarto, Quartetto, Squares, Quadrature, Squaryd, 4 Eyes, Quirk, Quod, Corral, Mondagro, Lattice, or Diamonds (yes, there are lots!).

[1] Shimizu et al., Game boards in the Longmen Caves and the game Fang, BGS 5.

[addendum] I found this Chinese site which says (using automatic translation):

Rules for the Game "Fangqi" (方棋)

Introduction. Fangqi is a collective term for traditional two-player board games popular in northern China. The capture method resembles that of Zhizi, where forming specific patterns allows the capture of opponents' pieces. Rules, board designs, and names vary slightly across regions.

Game Phases: 

1. Placing Phase: Players alternate placing one piece at a time on an empty intersection of the board until all pieces are placed.
2. Biqi Phase (Removal Phase): If the board is filled, each player selects one opponent's piece to remove. On odd-lined boards, the second player selects first, and on even-lined boards, the first player selects first.
3. Moving Phase: Players take turns moving one piece along a line to an adjacent empty spot.

Capturing Pieces:

• Captures occur when a specific pattern is formed (e.g., a square or rectangle). The capturing player removes a specified number of opponent's pieces, prioritizing unprotected pieces.
• Common patterns:
• Square: Four pieces forming a square remove one opponent's piece.
• Rectangle: Six pieces forming a rectangle remove two opponent's pieces.
• Victory is achieved by reducing the opponent's pieces to a number insufficient for forming capture patterns.

Movement Rules:

• Generally, players can only move one piece to an adjacent empty intersection.
• In some digital implementations, a player who cannot move loses; others allow returning to the Biqi Phase to remove additional pieces.

Regional Variations and Specific Rules:

1. Daxing District (Beijing)  
   - Placing Rules: Pieces cannot be placed at the four corners.
   - Capture Patterns:
     - Dragon: Five pieces in a straight line (horizontal or vertical) capture three opponent's pieces.
     - Square: Four pieces forming a square capture one opponent's piece.

 2. Guan County (Hebei)  
   - Placing Rules: Same as Daxing.  
   - Capture Patterns:
     - Dragon: Five pieces in a straight line add two pieces in the placing phase or capture two in the moving phase.
     - Square: Four pieces forming a square add one piece in the placing phase or capture one in the moving phase.

 3. Qinghai  
   - Unique Rules: Pieces are returned to the opponent instead of being removed.
   - Capture Patterns:
     - Bar (杠): Five pieces in a line remove three opponent pieces, with the line marked as unusable for further captures.
     - Square: Four pieces forming a square remove one opponent piece and mark the square unusable.

 4. Shandong Variations (Wugunqi, etc.)  
   - Capture occurs during the placing phase, but pieces are marked and removed before the moving phase begins.
   - Unique terms like "Five Tigers" and "Three Diagonals" describe specific formations.

 5. Northeast China (Manchu)  
   - Similar to Shandong, with unique formations such as "Big Tiger Claw" and "Sky Bar".

Summary. Fangqi incorporates a rich variety of rules that adapt to regional preferences. Core elements such as strategic placement, capture through pattern formation, and movement across intersecting lines remain consistent. Each regional variant adds unique strategies, fostering a diverse gaming experience.