OLING

Copyright (c) 2004 Pascal Nivesse

This game is played on a 18x18 square board:

Each player has 60 stones off board.

TURNS - At each turn, each player drops up to three friendly stones The stones can be dropped on empty cells or cells occupied by enemy stones (which are captured). A stone that made some capture cannot be captured for the rest of the game (in the diagram I use marked stones to identify these). Each dropped stone must be (orthogonal or diagonal) adjacent to a friendly stone connected to its original corner. So, if one or more stones get isolated (by some capture) they must be  reconnected before being used to extend the main group (i.e., the group of stones connected with the player's original corner. In the first turn, each player drops just two stones. GOAL - Wins the player that captures the enemy's initial stone.

 

An example Black's turn. The black group is vulnerable to the two marked white stones (those stones already captured some black stones and are invulnerable).   What Black tries is to isolate them first, in order to make White lost a turn reconnecting them, and at the same time, have some advanced invulnerable group (even if it will be disconnected for the next turn).

You can check the original rules here (in French) which also includes some variants. This game rules also includes a 4 player match.