HEX-IT

Copyright (c) 2004 Vincent Everaert

Hex-It starts with just four colored hexagons which can be appended with more hexs. There are, in a shared reserve 39 white tiles, 39 black tiles (or just 39 Othello-like tiles) and also 8 pieces per player (8 black stones for Black, and 8 white stones for White). Herein, I use a boundless plane of hexes where players drop tiles and stones.

 
  • STACK - a stack of stones of either color. The color of the top stone defines ownership.
    • A stack does not include the (eventual) tile under it.
    • A stack with no tile is called a prisoner, otherwise, it is free.
  • TILE - A tile with no other stone over it is called empty.
  • MOVE - On each turn, each player must do one of the following actions:
    • Drop - drop a friendly stone over an empty tile (of either color).
    • Deal - pick a free stack and drop one stone per tile (starting at the bottom) on a straight line, if at least one of its stones land over an enemy stack not higher than the picked stack.
      • Every tile between both stacks should be empty.
      • If the player, when dropping his stack, reaches a cell with no tile, all the remaining stones are dropped there (i.e., the remaining stack is a prisoner).
    • Release - If a prisoner (of either color) is adjacent to two or more tiles, the player may remove the stack and replace it with a friendly tile.
      • A player may replace, at the same turn, any number of adjacent prisoners.
      • The removed stones are returned to their initial owners so they may be used again.
    • Pass - the player passes his turn.
    • Deals take precedence over drops and releases.
    • Deals which produce prisoners take precedence over other deals.
    • Drops and releases take precedence over passes.
  • GOAL - The game ends when there are 39 tiles on board or both player pass. Wins the player with the highest score:
    • 1 point per friendly tile from the biggest group (i.e., the biggest set of friendly connected tiles)
    • 1/2 for each other friendly tile.
 
Examples

(In the following diagrams we use a red tile below stacks to denote prisoners)

In this example, there are six tiles and two stones (no prisoners).

If it is Black's turn, he must execute a deal: move his stone over to the white stone and by that, be the only player with a stack (of size 2) on board.

After that, White may drop a friendly stone of any of the five empty tiles.

White's turn. White must execute a deal. There are three black stacks on line of sight, but the isolated black stone at c5 is too far away (white's stack only has two stones), while the big black stack on the left is too high. So these two stacks do not offer valid moves.

The only valid deal for White is over the adjacent black stack, placing there the black stone, and the white stone over the  white stack.

Here is an example (top group) where the execution of the deal produces a prisoner (bottom group).
Here is an example of a white replacement (top is before, bottom is after), where he replaces two adjacent prisoners with two friendly tiles.
Final Score

The game ended in this board position.

 

 

 

 

 

If we 'clean' everything out except the tiles, we get this second diagram.

White's biggest group has 9 tiles (=9 points) and he has 7 other tiles (=3.5 points) with a total of 12.5 points.

Black's biggest group has 16 tiles (=16 points) and 2 other tiles (=1 point), making a total of 17 points). Black wins the game.

Check Vincent's website for more information (game records, more examples...) about Hex-It. This game won a french "Abstract Game of Year" of 2004.