The Game of Temples

Le Jeu des Temples is a 1992 unpublished game by Laurent Escoffier.

Each player has nine pieces plus one temple. There are also 32 shared tiles. Each player owns its nearest half of the 10x10 board.

• Initially, each player drops a tile and places her temple on it.
• Phase I: Each player, on her turn, places one tile on her half of the board, until all tiles are on the board. In the first nine tiles, they also place her pieces on top of those tiles.
• Phase II: On their turn, each player can either 
• (a) move a friendly piece to an (orthogonally or diagonally) adjacent empty tile (or the tile with the enemy temple, cf. win condition)
  
• (b) move any tile to an (orthogonally or diagonally) adjacent empty square. The moving tile must be empty or occupied by a friendly piece.
• Wins the player that moves a friendly piece to the tile occupied by the enemy temple.
• It is not allowed to block the game by surrounding your own temple with friendly pieces.
  

The ruleset provides a good idea, the two-level movement of different tokens, ones owned, ones shared. However, it seems to provide many ways to develop drawish strategies, like blocking (which the rules try to explicitly prevent, usually a bad sign) or unmaking the previous adversary move if he makes a tile movement. Perhaps a Ko rule and/or a misère stalemate rule could prevent problems the game design might have.

The LogiQuad Game System

The LogiQuad Game System is a 1969 game by John H. Geiger, published by Metroplan.

It is played in a 6x6 board that supports the placement of marbles. These marbles can be placed on top of each other, adding a third dimension to the game.

Players alternate by placing marbles. If a square of 2x2 balls have at least one friendly marble, the player can drop a new marble on top of those four marbles. If the player has three or four of those base marbles, he scores one point. If no move is available, the player must pass. When the entire pyramid is built, wins the player with the highest score.

Geiger, afaict, calls it a game system because he understood that the game material, just like a deck of cards, is a game system. Many different games and puzzles can be designed for it. In the booklet, here are two possible puzzles to play:

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The concept of stacking marbles had other iterations: Upper Hand, aka Pyramids, is a 1985 game by Margalith Akavya, and played on a 5x5 grid,

Each player has 27 marbles, and there is one extra neutral marble (having a third color). The goal is to place all friendly marbles on the pyramid.

• Initially, the neutral marble is placed at the board center. 
• On his turn, a player places a marble on the board. 
• If the placement formed a 2x2 square with three or four friendly marbles, the player moves again. This process continues until no more similar squares are made. 

These rules are very similar to those of LogiQuad's. This could be played in the previous set, which reinforces the game system perspective.

A more modern version of Pyramids is 2018's Mosaic, which uses a bigger 7x7 board.

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Cameron Browne produced another iteration of this idea. He designed Shibumi, a 2011 game system with a 4x4 grid and 16 marbles or three different colors. A book exists with several game rules:

the book is available online

The book gathers games proposed at The Shibumi Challenge where at least 48 games were submitted.
Examples are Spout, a 4x4 version of Upper Hand, and Spoff, a puzzle. 

Browne also designed Margo, a 2006 game, is a 6x6 variant of this same principle; and 2002's Akron, a connection game described at Abstract Games Magazine #14. Both are very good games.

Chain Games

The Ball and Chain Game, aka, Eclipse, is a 1999 abstract game by Gerardo Iula and Mirko Marchesi, publishes at Gigamic.

The game has as unusual feature: pieces chained together.

At BGG the rules are explained as:

The Ball and Chain Game is an abstract game for two. The oblong board contains hexagonal spaced holes for the ball-shaped pieces to rest. Each player has one large Guard and five pairs of smaller Prisoner pieces. Each pair of Prisoners is connected by a metal chain: two short chains and three long. A Prisoner may move as far as the chain will allow (1 or 2 spaces) while its partner stays put. The opponent's Prisoners may be temporarily immobilized by crossing one of your chains over theirs. The Guard moves one space at a time in any hex-axial direction. If, on your turn, you are unable to move your Guard, you lose.

The next picture shows an earlier ruleset:

Rulebook from an old page:

• With the game board placed the long way between them, players choose colors (dark or light) and who will go first. Chained balls (Prisoners) and the large balls (Guards) are positioned in holes in the game board at each player's end of the board.
• Play: Players, in turn, move either a Prisoner (Chained ball) or their Guard (single large ball). The Prisoners can move to an adjacent hole or as far as the length of chain will permit. The Guards are allowed to move to an adjacent hole. Players are allowed to cross chains, however, prisoners on the bottom chain in a crossover are 'locked down' and cannot move until their chain is free again. Guards can jump over the chains of their own prisoners, but not the chains of the opponent's prisoners.
• Winning: Players move their pieces in an attempt to block or trap the opponent's guard. The first player who is unable to move his/her Guard on the very next move loses the game. 

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Another game that uses the concept of chains connecting pieces is Dyade, a checkers-like variant from 1976.

 

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Check also 2018's Pivot by Dekel Noy:

• Objective: Be the first to form a straight line of 4 pawn in a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) in your chosen color.
• First, players choose either Red or White for their pawn color.
• Each player gets 7 playing pieces, each consisting of a red pawn and a white pawn connected by an elastic band.
• Taking turns, players add 1 playing piece to the board, and stretch the band accordingly. 
• Note: Players place both their own color and that of their opponent in the same turn.
• The first player to form a straight line of 4 pawns in his or her color wins the game!
• All 14 playing pieces placed with no winner? Players then take turns moving their own pawns until someone wins!

An Old Shape

This in an unnamed 1900 game by Annie C. B. MacDonald (usually, in these cases, we know the name and not the author). This game is described in US (or Canada) patent 653303.

The game is played on the following board:

The black area is just the description of the winning shape

Each player has twelve large pieces (to occupy the circles) and twelve small pieces (to occupy the little squares). 

Rules:

• Initially, each player drops one of his pieces in an empty circle/square
• Afterwards, each player moves one friendly piece to an adjacent empty circle/square
• Wins the player that first makes the winning shape

This is a kind of moku game, where the winning shape is not a segment line. It seems quite difficult to make a shape consisting of nine pieces, so I guess most games will end in some kind of drawish position.

Anyway, the game has some originality, and I don't know of an earlier game that uses this board tiling.

The original document:

Hex-Nut, and the boardless effect

Hex Nut is a 2001 game by Luke Miratrix, published at Pair-of-Dice Games.

The game has no board. There are two sets of ten hexes, one per player.

The players, on their turn, can either:

a) Drop a new hex that must be connected to more enemy hexes than friendly ones. 

In the next diagram, the marked hexes are the legal moves for White to drop a new piece:

notice that the piece is the entire hex,
not just the black or white circle
(the empty hexes don't exist in the playing arena)

b) Move a friendly hex to the next edge of an adjacent hex (of either color). When the hex moves, if there's a group of hexes that would become separated from the rest of the pieces, then that group moves in tandem. 

In the next diagram, White moves to [1] taking the three sized group with it,

 

Moving a hex is only possible if it can be freely moved around the surface. If a hex is surrounded by enough pieces, and moving it would imply moving over other hexes, then that hex is locked in. 

In the next example, the middle white hex cannot move to either [1] or [2] since there's not enough space to move it freely.

Wins the player that makes a chain of eight or more friendly hexes. Notice that this is not a connected group, a chain is a sequence of pieces where each hex is crossed only once.

In the next diagram we see two groups of eight hexes, but the White is not a sequence of eight pieces, since there's a branch at the left, implying that one of those stones cannot be counted.

A tip from the official rules: 

The main thing I tell people, but which they rarely follow is: never split your pieces! If your pieces get divided, and your opponents do not, then you have lost. Consider if you have three pieces separate from your main clump. You cannot win unless they rejoin, and in the process of rejoining, they always cause a spot where your opponent can extend. In fact, once this happens to you, you should resign.

I find it interesting the boardless feature of Hex Nut. The shape of the game is built during the match; there's no restriction except for the pieces' shape.

Trax is perhaps the most classic boardless game, a tile-oriented game where players try to make a loop or a long enough line,

Trax has lots of resources, check traxgame.com for more information.

Hive, from 2001, is another boardless successful game. Other examples are Six, Ringo, Bermude, Pent-Up, Cubeo, Kaliko, Exxit, and John Conway's Sprouts.

             

 

GAMES magazine #39

I would like to mention Cameron Browne who designed some visually stunning boardless games, like Mambo, a territorial/capturing game:

check his website for more great examples.

Castello

Castello is a 1965 game by Carl Renström, published at Brio.

The game is played on a 21x15 board, with the following setup:

Each player has 30 pieces. There are also eleven castles.

Rules:

• On her turn, the player picks a friendly piece and either:
• moves it to an orthogonal or diagonal adjacent empty square
• in the piece's first move, it can move two steps
• jumps over a piece (of either color) -- not castles --, landing on the immediate next cell that must be empty
• any jumped enemy piece is captured
• jumps can be multiple and make turns in different directions
• friendly pieces can be jumped over more than once in a jumping sequence
• the jumping piece cannot return to its initial square before the jump sequence
• only a maximum of five captures are allowed
• A castle is captured by a player if it is orthogonally adjacent to three of her pieces 
• However, players cannot capture the four castles near their home rows
• The three central castles may not be captured until one of the four farthest castles are captured
• Wins the player that captures four castles or 28 enemy pieces

From Mats Winther's page:

This game is very good and remarkably similar to a medieval battle situation.

Castello was designed by Carl Renström. It was first published by BRIO in 1965. BRIO was founded in 1884 in Osby, a small town located in southern Sweden. Today, the small family-run business has grown into the global company BRIO AB, with subsidiaries in Germany, France and Japan and distributors around the world. BRIO’s product portfolio currently consists of numerous toys but also games for the whole family under the brand Alga. BRIO has been a Purveyor to the Royal Court of Sweden since the 1940s. Today, BRIO is owned by Ravensburger.

In the original rules, the Soldier can both step and jump in the eight directions. But eight freedoms for continuous jump moves seems excessive. That’s probably why the original rules include a rule that prevents capture of more than five pieces during one jump sequence. But this restriction is no longer necessary, as jump freedoms in this implementation have been reduced to five, except during capture. (Capture in the three backward directions is still allowed.) The Soldier can still step in eight directions. 

There is a ZRF by Mats to play Castello.

About Mats, he writes the site Board games, containing great information about old games. He also contributes a lot, at the Zillions database, to make traditional and regional board games available to play. Go check them!

From Chivalry to Lancer

Lancer (1973), aka Astroblitz (1968), is an uncredited game, published by The Game Crafter and Waddington House of Games.

The game box comes with two boards, one for two players, and another for three players. There are twelve pawns times three colors, and four larger pieces of each color.

Each player, on their turn, moves a friendly piece either (a) to an adjacent empty hex, (b) by jumping Checkers-like over one or more pieces of any color. Jumped enemy pieces are captured and removed immediately (enemy pieces cannot be jumped over twice, while friendly one can). Jumps are not mandatory.

The board has special marked hexes that players must reach. In the two-player version, a player wins by moving two friendly pieces into these hexes. In the three-player version, a player wins by also moving two pieces, to any scoring hex on either or both adversaries.

The larger pieces (named Yeomen, while the smaller ones are called Lancers) can also be moved but are not capturable. Their goal is defensive. These pieces cannot move into the no-man's land (the light-blue area).

There are also black hexes, and the central hex on either board, that cannot be moved into or jumped over. 

 

in the Astroblitz version the scoring area also exists:
it is defined by the subtle pink line across the player's area

A variant to the three-player version would be to win by placing one piece on each one of the scoring areas of the adversaries. Perhaps that would make the game too hard to finish, but it would also prevent lasting 2 vs. 1 alliances.

Not sure why captures are not mandatory, since that removes tactical depth to the game.

The gamecrafter website have a printable board:

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Lancer/Astroblitz is very similar to the much older Chivalry (from 1887) by George S. Parker.

Official rules of Chivalry here. 

The following iteration was Camelot (aka Inside Moves) in the 1930s, a more well-known board game,

some opening theory for Camelot

 

Rules and much more at the World Camelot Federation.

 

There are other variants using this ruleset. One is a large version, Grand Camelot (from 1932) and a mini version, Camette (2002).

 

 

Another reimplementation of Camelot is Inside Moves. Here's a review from GAMES #66,

 

Press Ups

Press Ups, aka Touch and Go, Basis 10 or Touch Down, is a 1974 board game by Yigal Bogoslavski, published at Invicta Games, among others. (GB patent 1524371)

Players place their ten pieces (10 reds and 10 blues) like in the diagram, while 29 green pieces occupy the remaining squares. The 7x7 board allows pieces to be pressed down, which is just an aesthetical replacement for dropping pieces on empty squares.

The first player presses one friendly piece. For the rest of the game, each player must press some unpressed piece adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) to the last pressed one.

When no more moves are possible, wins the player with more friendly pressed pieces.

Possible variants:

• change the King-like adjacency to a Knight-like, ie, the next piece to be pressed must be a knight's jump from the previous pressed piece. 
• include a first phase where players, alternately, drop their friendly pieces on empty squares (they place all green pieces at the remaining squares)
  

A review on Games & Puzzles #43:

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The move by blocking previous cells is a ludeme better known in Amazons (using a Queen-like adjacency). Alex Randolph's 1982 Plop is played with two Chess Knights on a 8x8 board, where each movement creates a wall on the initial square. The goal is to capture the single enemy Knight or stalemate the adversary. Around 2000 I submitted to The 32-Turn Challenge a Chess variant with this idea, The Knightliest Black Hole, where each move also removes an empty square from the board, but the game has several versions of the classical Knight. WAG's page about Slimetrail includes other abstract games with this type of move.

Jeux et Stratégie #37 presents another game with this idea, Numeration,

The first player marks the number 1 at an empty 5x5 board. Then, each player marks the successor of the previous number on an adjacent cell (orthogonal or diagonal), until the last possible move. That player scores the last number marked number, and sums to their total. The matches continue until one of the players reaches a predetermined goal.

Another example is found in GAMES magazine #39 (1983), called Sque-e-e-eze Play by Robert Mansfield:

A Argentinian old challenge

I found at the Argentinian magazine El Acertijo #17 (1995) the following challenge: 

Definition: A five-line is a piece that results in joining five segments of equal size, aligned consecutively by right angles. There are a total of 23 different five-lines.

The challenge is to use these 23 five-liners to build a perimeter with an area as large as possible, assuming the five-lines are supported by a ground level.

The first example, presented by Héctor San Segundo, the puzzle inventor, had a total area of 491:

In a subsequent number, the best answers to the challenge were presented:

The best result was 793 by Marcelo Iglesias. But Héctor had found a result with 811 units of area (the one shown above).

Afterwards, there was a new record by Pablo Coll with 814 units of area:

He argues, in the text above, that if the perimeter made by the five-liners were able to exactly follow the semi-circle, the maximum area would be around 830 units. So, 814 units is pretty close to that theoretical maximum.

The magazine does not seem to include more information about this puzzle.

Nowadays this problem might be solvable by searching for all valid possibilities. We cannot enumerate and try all solutions (23 factorial is still pretty big) but by searching with some good heuristics, this seems a doable problem.

Hexagonal Checkers

There are abstract games with hexagonal boards from the 19th century. And Checkers is a much older game. Also, Chinese Checkers, from 1893, while not being a Checkers game, uses its name and applies the same jumping principle (but without captures). So, while using hexagonal boards to play Checkers seems like -- in retrospect -- a rather obvious idea, did it had to wait until the 1970s and 1980s for the first variants to appear?

The best-known variant is Christian Freeling's 1979 HexDame, applying the rules of International Draughts on a hexagonal setting (cf. at BGG),

Less known variants include:

1) Pskov Checkers (undated), which uses the rules of Checkers instead of those from Draughts, and promotions are only possible at the last corner space (instead of the entire last rows of HexDame).

one of the proposed board/setup for Pskov checkers

 

Here's a translated ruleset (from Russian)

2) Damex, that appeared in Jeux & Strategy #13, uses the rules of Dames (the name of Checkers in France) in a squared-liked hex-board:

Damex solves a problem from traditional Checkers, where even three Kings vs one does not force a win in all possible positions. In Damex 2 vs. 1 is a win.

The game is attributed to M. Lavictoire that sent the rules to J&S in 1980. According to Ralf Gering, this is an iteration of an older game from Joseph Boyer*, Les Dames Hexagonales, described in his book (authored together with Vern Parton) Les jeux de dames non orthodoxes et autres jeux à pions from 1956 (referenced at google books but not available, hélas!). 

(*) Boyer also wrote three books about chess variants, Les Jeux d'échecs non orthodoxes (1951), Nouveaux Jeux d'Echecs Non Orthodoxes (1954), and Nouveaux jeux d'échecs intéressants (1956).

In 1925, US Patent 1623881 specifies a Checkers-like game with an hexagonal grid:

The moves and goals, however, make it a distant relative of the Checkers family. But we were able to go back from 1956 to 1925. 

A bit earlier, in 1914, Hervey Dexter Thatcher submitted patent US1106991 for a King Bridge Checker Game, also using a hexagonal grid:

In this game there is a middle three hex bridge, and when a piece crosses it, it is promoted to 'King'. This game was published as we can see in the next pictures,

Kingbridge, AGPI Quarterly volume 7 [4]

 

a modern edition of Kingbridge

We can still step back 20 years, for a game by J. F. Beaman in 1894, described in US Patent 529582:

This is a proper Checkers game. So, our first 19th century hit! 

Another hexagonal checkers was patented by Charles E. Duryea in 1888 (patent US384195):

Can we go further back? Yes, here's US Patent 259695 by John F. Kingwill from 1882:

This (unnamed) game is basically a Checkers for three players. So, we have already some 19th century Checkers games! At BGG it was named Hexadraughts.

For the oldest entry, Ralf Gering mentioned a book by J. G. Lallement, Les Quatre Jeux de Dames from 1802 (which had a 2023 reprint),

If we zoom in the boards:

we notice the triangular/hexagonal nature of the connections between the board spaces!

So, after all, the idea did not have to wait for the Seventies!

 

 

 

The Damex solution for figure 2, from the J&S puzzle: