Connex'Oh

Connex'Oh, aka Connexion, is a 1992 game by Sébastien Sjoholm, and published by Carlit.

The game is played on a 6x6 board. There are 36 tiles each divided into a dark triangle and a light triangle, and each player owns six pieces of his color. 

All tiles and pieces are initially placed as in the following diagram:

 Rules:

• On his turn, each player can either:
• Slide a friendly piece along a path made of empty adjacent triangles of the same color (two triangles are connected if they share one edge)
• note: the moving piece cannot jump over other pieces, nor stop on an occupied triangle
  
• Rotate a tile, whether it has pieces on it or not, by a quarter-turn or half-turn in either direction
• If the rotated tile made new connections of the player's color, then neither one of these tiles can be rotated next
• The game has a red token to identify the last rotated tile (cf. next picture) and its adjacent connections

 

• Wins the player that moves his army out of the board from to the player's opposite side
• To exit a piece from the game, the path it is on must be connected to the opposite side of the board; this requires the last triangle of the path to touch the edge of the game frame
• Once a path is connected to the exit, all pieces on that path are immediately removed from the game without waiting for the next turn. This rule applies regardless of which player connected the path.
• If a tile rotation causes both last pieces of both players to exit the board, the player that rotated the tile loses the game.
  

The rule of any number of pieces immediately leaving the game when a path is open to the board's edge, seems a way to allow the game to quickly converge to its end, but at the cost of loss of uniformity: it is a rule quite different in nature with regards to the regular move of just one piece per turn.

There is a 4x4 version of this game named Connexo published in 1995.

Red White Blue

Red White Blue is an uncredited game, c.1938, which was offered to customers by the firm Perry & Co [1].

The game is played on a 8x8 board, where one player has fourteen blue and seven white pieces, and the other player has fourteen red and seven white pieces. The white pieces are marked red or blue, to identify its owner.

The rules based on the text from Fred Horn (adjacency and movement are assumed either orthogonally or diagonally):

• On his turn, the player moves a friendly stone to an adjacent empty square
• When a player makes a red-white-blue pattern, he removes those three stones and scores one point (the white piece can be from either player)
  
• The game ends when it is no longer possible to make the pattern
• Wins the player with more points
  

This is a very interesting game. The ludeme of piece removal, after a pattern is made, is quite original as far as I can tell.

The color pattern comes from the flag of the Netherlands 🇳🇱.

[1] Fred Horn, Great Finds, AGPC Quarterly vol.17 [3], (2015).

Hinck

Hinck is a 1973 uncredited game, published by Interbero.

Each player has 40 pieces, which are initially placed in the players' first four rows, plus the four rightmost columns of the central row, leaving the 9x9 board's center empty.

Rules

• The first move (called a hinck) must go toward the free central square, in a horizontal direction.
• Each player, in her turn, selects a friendly piece and uses it to jump over an adjacent piece (of either color), landing on the next square, which must be empty. 
• The jumped piece is captured.
• Only orthogonal jumps are allowed (so, no diagonal jumps)
• A single capture takes precedence over a multiple capture, but once you begin a multiple capture you must complete it.
• When one player does not have more moves, the game ends. The player with less stones on board wins the game.

The single capture precedence is intriguing. Usually, a Checkers-like game making it optional the maximal-capture rule is bad design, because it prevents players to produce forced move sequences, which is one of the best things this family of games has. But here there's still a mandatory aspect to the ruling, which feels quite original.

Also, capturing your own stones is curious, but runs the risk of reducing player's interaction and making more of a race game. 

Realm

Realm is a 1973 game by Phil Orbanes Sr, and published in Gamut of Games and at nestorgames. 

It is played on a 12x12 board, where each army has 14 squares (the bases), nine triangles (the enforcers), and four circles (the powers). This is a game of capturing based on blocking pieces.

The rules are quite complex for an abstract game, and I will not write them here. Please check the rules written by nestorgames (which includes several variations).

The game was reviewed and explained in Abstract Games Magazine #9, and is playable at AbstractPlay.

Also, here's an older review from GAMES #47:

Kage

Kage is a 1986 game by Jay Myers, published by TSR. 

The game, played on a 8x8 board, comes with one red 'bird', one blue 'bird', and 48 white walls.

The rules:

• Initially, the birds are placed at d5 and e4
  
• Then, on his turn, a player can either:
• Move his bird to an orthogonal adjacent empty square (if there's no wall in-between)
• Drop a wall in-between squares, or at the board's edge
  
• Wins the player that encloses the adversary bird in a connect chain of walls (the cage), 
• Note that the edge itself is not a wall; if the cage includes the board edge, then those squares also need walls.
  
• The player wins even if his own bird gets enclosed at that same turn
• If after placing all walls, neither bird is enclosed, the game is a draw
  

Some tips from Chris Okasaki:

Be sure to pay attention to how your opponent can use the toothpicks you place against you. This is especially true in the endgame, where it is common to see one player place a toothpick intending to threaten the other pawn, and then the other player suddenly wins by placing a toothpick that encloses both pawns simultaneously.

An advanced tactic is to use your pawn to block your opponent from escaping your enclosure. It is dangerous, however, because to do so you must be close enough to risk being enclosed yourself.