Vaeva

Vaeva is a 1986 game by Albert Raguenes, published by Novolud.

The game is played on a 20x20 board; there is a 4x2 piece (the boat) that is placed at the center:

Each player has nine pieces

Rules:

• Players, facing each other, initially place their pieces on their first row
  
• Each player, on their turn, can either:
• move one of their pieces diagonally by one square
• jump diagonally over one or more pieces (jumped pieces must form a continuous line)
• slide the boat orthogonally by as many squares as there are friendly pieces inside the boat
• enter the boat, by sliding vertically or horizontally a piece over a line of empty squares. 
• the number of empty squares of this slide is determined by how many friendly pieces are already inside the boat (so, the first piece to enter the boat must be adjacent to it)
  
• A piece cannot enter the boat via a jump
• Wins the player that loads five pieces into the boat

The game was reviewed at Jeux et Stratègie #47:

There are some differences between Patrik Carpentier's rules and this J&S review.

• Patrik describes specific places for the game's setup:

• Patrik states the board can move orthogonally, while J&S only mentions horizontal moves
• Neither Patrik nor J&S explains what happens if the boat would move over a neighboring piece (possibly, the boat cannot move in that position)
  

J&S review also includes some comments:

• The concept of movements linked to other elements, such as the number of pieces onboard or aligned, has already been used in other Novolud games. However, in Vaeva, the very simple rules particularly highlight the depth of this principle in its tactical applications.
• Should you move cautiously or rush to board a piece as quickly as possible to take control of the platform?
• Should you be offensive or defensive, focusing on placing blocking pieces to disrupt your opponent's trajectories?
• The symmetrical progression of both players often leads to them having the same number of pieces on the platform, thus [having] the same potential to move the platform. The rule specifying that the platform cannot return to the position it previously occupied creates situations reminiscent of Zugzwang in chess, where being forced to play becomes a disadvantage.

I was unable to find online the official rules, or any other game published by Novolud.

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.

Quandary

Quandary is a 1970 uncredited game, published at Spear's Games.

The game is played on a 12x12 multi-colored board:

Each player has four pieces that must be placed in his first row. The game comes with 12 numbered cards (1 to 12) that must be shuffled for each player that draws four of them that determines the piece's initial position.

Rules:

• On his turn, the player moves a friendly stone forward (vertically or diagonally) to an empty square
• However, the move is only valid if the square the player moves into is of the same color to any one of the four squares directly in front of an enemy piece (it does not matter if those squares are occupied or not)
• If there are no valid moves, the player passes
• Wins the player that moves one friendly piece to his last row

Here are the original rules:

I don't see how the use of cards is necessary for the game to work properly, besides forcing matches to start in different initial positions. We could replace the random mechanism by initially making players drop one piece per turn in their first rows.

Making the moves dependent on the board position, and especially of the adversary, hurts clarity a lot. Not sure how it is possible to plan more than one move ahead.

A comment by Clark Rodeffer:

Quandary can sometimes (always?) be played to a stalemate if one or both players intentionally limit color choices. The problem stems from the layout of the colored squares -- the closest any two squares of the same color are on the standard board is a knight's move apart. As a result, moving into colored squares that block your opponent's choices is relatively easy, leading to many mutually blocked games. The game can probably be fixed by making the movement of the pawns a knight's move (with four potential target squares) instead of the current forward one orthogonal or diagonal step (only three potential target squares), but I have yet to try this variant.

Quandary appeared on Jeux et Stratègie #47:

And in Games & Puzzles #15:

On Guard

On Guard is a 1974 uncredited game, published at Orda Industries.

The game is played on 7x7 board, and each player has 24 stones:

this is not the setup, the board starts empty

There is a setup phase where player drops their stones on empty positions, in alternate turns. The board center should start empty.

The official rules:

 

OBJECT OF GAME 

Game can be won in either of the following ways:

• Capturing all of opponent’s OFFICERS, or 
• Maneuvering so that opponent cannot make a move.

PLAY OF GAME

A. How Playing Pieces are Moved:

Individual playing pieces can be moved vertically or horizontally. Diagonal moves are not permitted.
A move consists of making an OFFICER (described below) or moving one playing piece, either a GUARD or an OFFICER, to a vacant space. NOTE: Only one OFFICER can be made per turn.

1. OFFICERS – OFFICERS consist of two GUARDS, one placed on top of the other. Only one OFFICER can be made in any one turn. OFFICERS can move any number of spaces, but all intervening spaces must be open. OFFICERS can jump over other OFFICERS as well as making 90-degree turns. But, OFFICERS cannot jump over GUARDS. When opponent’s OFFICER has been “jumped”, it is removed from the playing board.
2. GUARDS – GUARDS can move only one space at any time into any open space. GUARDS cannot jump.

B. Order of Play:

1. Both players randomly place all 48 playing pieces on raised circles of playing board — leaving center circle blank.
2. Both players must create an OFFICER on their first turn of play. NOTE: At least one OFFICER must be on the playing surface at all times or game is ended.
3. After first creating OFFICERS, play alternates. Players use OFFICERS to capture as many of opponent’s OFFICERS as possible. GUARDS are maneuvered to block opponent’s OFFICERS.
4. Play continues with each player moving in turn — placing his GUARDS and OFFICERS so as to accomplish one of the two methods of victory.
5. Game is won when:
• a. One player captures all of his opponent’s OFFICERS, or
• b. One player maneuvers his pieces so that his opponent cannot move any of his remaining pieces.

I assume that moves and captures are only in orthogonal directions (it would be very hard to stalemate, otherwise). The game is near Checkers, where promotions are easier to do, but the Officers are not as powerful as in standard Checkers. The setup phase is too long for modern online play, and it should be replaced with some standard position.

Gambit

Gambit is a 1973 game by David W. Currie, published at Challenge Games.

The game is played on the following 10x16 board:

The game has a Chess-like feel, with four types of pieces representing military vehicles, and three types of positions (!) representing land, sea and air. Winning can be done either by elimination or reaching the opponent's home position. There is a collection of interesting moves made possible by combining pieces.

These are the original rules:

note: the first page shows the initial setup with 19 pieces per player. However, the game came with only 18 pieces. There is an amphibian piece at the top-right corner, in the setup diagram, that is a misprint (correction mentioned by Patrick Kelley).

 

big thanks to Patrick Kelley for sharing these rules 

There's a comment on BGG's page regarding Gambit's board and cover:

The map for at least one printing is a bit of a curiosity. In it, the cover of the box shows a 10x10 board with alternating green and blue squares. The instructions note that the land squares are green and the sea squares are blue. However, the actual map provided is 10x16, has only black and white print on yellow paper, and uses the letters "L" and "S" to designate land and sea spaces. It would appear that the designer assumed he would be able to print color boards, but then had to fall back to a simpler black and white drawing printed on yellow paper.