PUX

Copyright (c) 2000 Joćo Neto

Pux is a two player strategy game played on a 8x8 board with the following setup:


  • Definitions
    • A Piece may be one stone or a promoted stone (two stones stacked together).
    •  The Move Potential (MP) of a Piece is the number of adjacent friendly stones (orthogonal and diagonal) plus its own stones.
  • MOVING - A Piece moves up to MP cells on a straight line, on a lateral or forward direction (diagonal or orthogonal) without jumping any stones.
    • (a) A player cannot make two consecutive lateral moves.
    • (b) A stone is promoted when it reaches last rank (the player places another stone above it). A promoted stone may move backwards (incl. diagonals).
    • (c) When moving, a Piece may transport its (up to 4) orthogonal neighbors. However, the Piece must distribute evenly its MP with all transported Pieces (remove any decimal part).
  • CAPTURING - To capture, a Piece:
    • (a) Must have a greater MP than its target, and
    • (b) Must not transport any other Piece.
  • The board, at any moment, cannot have more than 12 stones of each color.
  • GOAL - Wins the player that captures all enemy stones.

 
Some capture samples

Black can capture any one (but just one!) of the 3 advanced White pieces. E.g., b7:b5, d7:b5, c7:c4, f6:d4


Some notes:
  • A promoted stone may move 2 squares by itself.
  • Rule (a) for moving prevents many drawish strategies, since both armies must advance.
  • Rule (c) for moving says that if a Piece having MP points is going to transport N pieces, the group can move up to MP/N squares (integer division, i.e., divide then remove decimal part).
  • Rule (c) for moving does not forbid enemy Pieces transportation!
  • Rule (b) for capturing states that there are no multiple captures or captures with multiple stones.
  • Stones cannot promote if there are no friendly stones captured.
  • About PUX notation:
    • [CAPTURE] piece position : captured piece position
    • [MOVEMENT] piece position, transported pieces - next position. E.g., b2,b1c2-c3. It means piece b2 transports b1 and c2 and moves to c3 (b1 goes to c2 and c2 goes to d3) The b2 stone has 3 neighbors (including diagonals) which are b1, c1 and c2. That means its move potential is 4 (including itself). Since White wants to transport 2 neighbors, he must distribute the b2 move potential (which is 4) by itself and the other 2 transported stones. So, move potential which is 4 divided by 3 stones equals 1.3, then after removing the decimal part, we get 1, i.e., the group may move 1 square. If b2 transports only one stone, then both of them could move up to 2 squares (4 MP / 2 stones = 2 squares). For e.g.. 1. b2,b1-b4
 

Game Background: Trabsact Sagme was the Earth's 1st serious ExoLudologist. She was born around Ulan Bator, in 2293. Since her infancy, she was very interested by all the knowledge created and gathered in the 20th and 21st centuries about abstract board games, a subject almost forgotten on those exciting days. Alien civilizations were finally found across the big black sky, and Humanity had the 1st change to read Encyclopedia Galactica. After collecting the most important games on Earth, she decided that her life goal would be to study the games from some of those alien civilizations. She was one of the few people that had the right to travel and enter into some alien home worlds. It was no coincidence that the aliens that allow her to enter, was exactly the ones which had more respect about games, especially abstract board games. She visited the following civilizations:

She found many resemblances with Human games, especially in connection and pattern games, namely, Hex and Gomoku were found in almost all home worlds (however in different board sizes and move equalizers). Curiously, no chess related game was ever found! This game came from the Zet culture, and was renamed by T.Sagme in 2379. Perhaps her most famous discover was Desdemona, the Othello variant from Civ-3.