OOYOO

Copyright (c) 2003 Peter Husche, RCR Terry

This game is played on the following 11x11 square board:

 

TURN - At each turn, each player must move exactly two adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) friendly stones. Both stones move one cell only but they cannot move into occupied cells (except if one goes into the cell of the other) . White stones may only move north, east or northeast inside his home base. Black stones may only move south, west, southwest inside his home base. GOAL - Wins the player that first moves his pieces into the adversary setup position. Also, if a player leaves an isolated stone in his own setup position, he immediately loses the game.

This game has a race element (like Halma and Chinese Checkers) where the positional aspect is extremely important since isolated pieces cannot be recovered (pieces may not move backwards inside its home base). Anyway, there seems to be a way to break the original rules: leaving two adjacent stones inside the home base guarantees a draw... Probably (like the discussion with Halma) the goal should be updated to: a player wins if the adversary home base is fully occupied with at least a friendly stone. Another way would be to restrict the piece movements, i.e., no piece may move backward at any time. The game would be much more positional and the first player that finds himself into an unrecoverable position, loses the game.

Some possible moves In the diagram there are some possible valid moves for pairs of adjacent stones.