Happy 45²

Cabale

Cabale is a 1999 game by Roland Siegers, published at Goldsieber Spiele.

It's a blocking and scoring game for 2 to 4 players, with (too?) many different elements.

There's a video from channel Exacting Games explaining the rules:

And here are the rules (written by Jay Tummelson, taken from BGG). 

Cabale is a rebranding of 1986's Winkeladvokat.

Connect 4 with a twist

I'm (re)reading the Jeux et Strategie magazine and, in issue 28, I found this,

The translation: The game is played on a Go board. A border line represents the ground. The game is played on the intersections. The objective of the game is to align four stones in any direction. The constraint: starting from the second line, a stone can only be placed if the intersections directly below it, vertically, are occupied. The first move must therefore be made on the first line; the second move can be made either on the first line or on the intersection of the second line that is vertically aligned with the first stone, and so on.

At first I was hoping for a surprising little variant, but the rules, as I read them, just describes the classic Connect-4. Anyway, it made me think of a possible variant including captures: if the last placed piece has the effect of surrounding an enemy group, that group is captured, and all remaining pieces follow gravity. The player that makes the winning pattern wins (if both have a winning pattern, wins the player that just moved).

An example: 

a) Black (X) to move
b) Black plays at 1, forcing White's 2, then answer at 3
c) White plays at 1 making atari at Black's left group, but Black plays at 2 capturing White's group
d) The white pieces are removed, and the black pieces fall down, making a 4 in-a-row

. . . . . . . .      . . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .      . . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .
. . o x . . . .      . . o x . . . .     . 1 o x . . . .     . . o x . . . .
. . x o x o . .      . 3 x o x o . .     2 x x o x o . .     . o x o x o . .
o . x o o o x .      o 2 x o o o x .     o o x o o o x .     x x x o o o x .
x . x o o x x .      x 1 x o o x x .     x x x o o x x .     x x x o o x x .
     (a)                  (b)                 (c)                 (d) 

I suspect that the game does not need a large space before either the game ends or captures become unavoidable. 

There are two modifications that I think are needed:

• The winning pattern must be a 5 in-a-row (4 in-a-row is too easy)
• The winning pattern must be exactly a 5 in-a-row (allowing for matches to develop more)
  

Choosing an appropriate number of columns and rows for this ruleset is left as an exercise for the reader!

Octiles

 A Dale Walton's game from 1984 published by Kadon.

Each player starts with five counters on the initial positions. There are also 18 tiles,

 

all eighteen tiles

Each player must move their counters to the circles on the other side of the board.

At the beginning the board is empty, and there are no paths to travel. The tiles are shuffled and stacked.

On his turn, 

1. a player takes the top tile from the stack and places it on the board (adjacent to one of her pieces). The tile may replace an existing tile, which goes to the bottom of the stack.
   
2. then the player moves one of his pieces over that tile, and eventually others, travelling thru a connected path. The path must end in an empty middle circle. Pieces cannot stop at the adversary final circles (i.e., their initial positions for a two player game).
   

When all tiles are used, all remaining moves will imply a tile replacement (the removed tile is then used by the next player).

Notice that when paths cross, that means bridges not road blocks. Paths can also follow the paths printed onboard.

When a piece reaches one of its final circles, it can no longer move. 

A player can pass, but it is illegal to have two passes in a row.

@ boardgamegeek

An old abstract game

The French historian Thierry Depaulis presented, in his BGS 2013 talk, three board games from the 1600s. One was a dice game, another a race game (both typical of the epoch) but the third was a quite interesting abstract board game. This one is called Le jeux de la Guerre (The game of War) and, despite the fact that the author's name was lost, it seems a proprietary game - with an inclusion at the board of the label Avec Previlege du Roy (with the King's privilege). 

 

Here's a picture of the board:

 

 

and I was able to dig the rules written by Charles Sorel in his book La Maison des Jeux Academiques published in 1668 [free access at Google Books].

Here are the relevant pages:

 

 

 

A nice discovery!

Quads galore

Quads is a 1986 game by Edmond C. Leonard. It is territory game, as it is a Go variant,

@ boardgamegeek

But there are several other games called Quads: one a battleship clone and another a variant of dominoes.

But the fourth game, by Kris Burm at 1996, is a really interesting tiling game,

Against Entropy

After a long hiatus, I've been solving all the problems that arised due to the ephemeral features of the internet. Google services are becoming more and more unreliable, many diagrams and pictures were lost after one of those services was discontinued. I recovered most losses and the posts are back with all the original information. Also, I saved all photos in Github if blogger (which is owned by Google) also decides to lose this new batch of pictures. Life and work are constant fights against entropy, which is just a big word for loss.

1915 Corona

Corona (Crowns) is a game from 1915 which the next picture were sent to me by Fred Horn.

It states it was manufactured by The Corona Company, game producers from Los Angeles, with a copyright from the 1910s (it's hard to see).

The picture of the board gives an extra clue, the copyright was from June 1915,

The printed rules are,

If we zoom in the top of the pieces box, we get some hard to read information,

But we find an alternative name, 'Crowns'. Using this information I went to Google patents and was able to find patent US87328614A from U. C. Upjohn, an application filed in Non, 21, 1914 and published at 1915-06-29, which corresponds to the board printed text. The board and patented ruleset is as follows,

A Game is Born

Inside my website World of Abstract Games, there is one page dedicated to Checkers variants. It includes regional rulesets and several other more recent inventions. Around 2001 or 2002 I included another one that I called "Board Draughts" with the following text:

In Board Draughts, each player also starts with 8 stones of the first two rows. Stones cannot capture and just move and jump forward. The goal is to move all stones to the last row (where they are removed from board). Wins the player with no stones left. I don't have information about if jumping is mandatory, but I would guess that it is.

The game rules were copied from the rule's book of a 200 pack game that I had bought several years before,

Of course, 18 years passed and I had completely forgot all about this.

Last November, Ralf Gering sent me an email asking for more details about Board Draughts. He had noticed that the rules, as stated, were not complete. It seemed that [Ralf's Words],

jumping must be mandatory, otherwise it would be just too easy to block the opponent's stones. Which leads to another question: What do you do if your stones are blocked, which can still happen (albeit rarely)? In my opinion the player who is blocked should lose the game (as in "normal" draughts), which would add another strategic layer to the game.

I agreed and included that on the ruleset. Ralf also gave a puzzle for this adapted game,

(solution at the end)

...and asked about the source of the original rules. I really didn't remember, but he was able to found some old email where I had mentioned the 200 pack game. I check it and indeed found the original text (in Portuguese),

Here there is also a Go-like variant where a group of surrounded checkers are captured and removed from the board. But at the time I didn't add it to the checkers page.

Anyway, I sent this information to Ralf and he was able to found a 1998 German edition called "200 Spiele: Viele Spiele für die ganze Familie", published by Peri-Spiele, an Austrian game business.

with the same game collection.

Ralf then commented,

Your game is actually called Halma-Dame in German! It was described by Erwin Glonnegger and Walter Diem in "Das große Ravensburger Spielebuch" (1974) [They also describe Blockade (=Bloqueio) just before they describe Halma-Dame!], by Hajo Bücken and Dirk Hanneforth in "Klassische Spiele ganz neu" (1990) and by Theo Hartogh in "Alte Brettspiele neu entdeckt: Mühle, Dame, Halma" (1999). The Portuguese translation is, however, misleading and (partly) outright wrong. According to the German sources pieces are allowed to leap over opponent's pieces, but that's not mandatory. The object of the game is to occupy the two farthest ranks that is the start position of the opponent. Pieces are never removed from the board. Nothing is said about blockades in the German rules.

So, my initial attempt to make sense of the Portuguese text, resulted in a (partially specified) new checkers game. I changed the checkers webpage to reflect this.

This is a small example of what I think is an important effect in the history of board games. Some regional variants, even new games, could have been created due to misunderstandings between people from different lands, communicating with difficulty without a proper shared language. Others might be born from reading underspecified rules or bad translations from books describing games. These misunderstandings produce ambiguity when trying to play the game afterwards, within your own family or community, and there is the need to create patches to make the game playable again. A bit like mutation in evolution.

s i*X*O

A  Tile - laying Boardgame 

Fred Horn  25/11/2016

Introduction On SPIEL’16 in Essen I did meet Mr. Christer Ekberg from Sweden who was presenting a newly published game TREXO by Förlago AB.  The material to play the game reminded me strongly of something I did invent in the last part of the 70’s nearly forty years ago. Looking through my historic files I found the Notes for a game on a 8x8-board, using domino-like game-pieces with the symbols of ‘noughts and crosses’: an X  and an O. It was easy to see that this game (it never got a name!) with a few adapted rules could be played on the Board and with the Tiles of the TREXO-game.

Aim of the Game

• To be the Player with more “lines” with six of his symbols on a ‘line’.

Material

• Board with 10 x 10 squares
• 45 Tiles – two squares with on one square an X and on the other square an O

Start

• The Board is placed between the two Players on the Table.
• All Tiles are placed in a “Stock” next to the Board.
• One Player picks 1 Tile and place it anywhere, according to the grid, on the Board.
• The other Player choses his symbol:  X  or  O .
• The first Player do have two options: or to start play or to let his opponent start.
• When the starting Player’s Tile is West/East, than the other Player places his Tiles North/South and in reverse when the first Player does have North/South the other places West/East.

Play

• After ‘start play’, Players’  Turns alternate.
• In his Turn a Player takes a Tile from the “Stock” and places it to his wish anywhere on the Board according to his orientation (North/South or West/East).
• Players try to get 6 (exactly 6!) of their symbol on a straight ‘line’ on the Board.
• The symbols do not need to be adjacent, other symbols or open squares in between are allowed.
• If a Player makes a ‘line’ with 6 of the opponents symbols that does not count.
• When a Player has made a ‘line’ (if possible to make 2 or more -‘lines’ with 6- in the same Turn, each ‘line’ counts) with 6 of his symbols, he end his Turn by picking a Tile for each ‘line’ from the “Stock” placing it “blind” in front of him to mark his “Score”.
• When the “Stock” is empty game ends.
• Each Player counts his “Scored” Tiles. Player with the highest sum wins.
• When it is an equal sum the game ends in a Draw.
  

TRINGS

A Board-Game for 2 Players by Fred Horn

Fred Horn   18-04-2018

MATERIAL

• Game-Board
• Two sets of Playing -Pieces in different colors consist of: 4 pins; 4 tubes; 4 rings.
• The pin fits into the tube which fits into the ring.

 

SETUP

 

AIM of the GAME

• To be the first Player who makes FOUR ‘TOWERS’ (a pin in a pipe in a ring) anywhere upon the (cross)points of the Board except on the points with a dot (the start-points).

RULES

• Red starts than Turns alternate.
• In his Turn a Player may move a Piece to an adjacent empty (cross)point, or he may jump over another Piece (or combined Pieces) when the (cross)point thereafter in the jump-direction is empty.
• Multiple jumps are allowed and change of direction after each jump also. Player can stop jumping on a point of his wish.
• Player has to move or jump, passing in his Turn is not allowed.
• Player may end his move or jump by placing his Piece ‘in’ or ‘over’ a Piece of his own color.
• A pin can only be placed ‘in’ a pipe and a pipe only ‘in’ a ring, as well as a ring can only be   placed ‘over’ a pipe and a pipe ‘over’ a pin. 
• Making a ‘combination’ upon a (cross)point with a dot (the start-points) is not allowed.  
• Ending a ring ‘over a pin or a pin ‘in’ a ring is not allowed.
• When a (cross)point is occupied by 2 or 3 Pieces these cannot be moved again, they stay put.
• The first Player making FOUR “TOWERS” upon ‘not-dotted’ points, WINS.

A larger Board is available to play the game with three or four Players. Players alternate Turns clockwise, Red starts. Other Rules identical to the 2-Player-game.

 

 

Start-position for the game with three Players:

 

Start-position for the game with four Players: