XANA

Copyright (c) 2005 João Pedro Neto

This game is played on the following board.

There are, off board, 16 white stones, 16 black stones and enough neutral stones (known as walls). The white and black stones should be stackable.

DEFINITIONS Accessibility: Any empty cell X is accessible to a player on his 1st move, or if it is stepwise connected by empty cells to some friendly stack. Circle: The circle of stack S (with height H) is all cells accessible to S at Hex-Euclidean distance (from S) less or equal to H. Check the examples below. TURN - At each turn, each player may do two actions: First, optionally insert or move a friendly stack. A stack (one or more friendly stones off board) is inserted at an accessible cell or on top of a friendly stack already on board (which increases its height). A stack must be adjacent to an empty cell, unless it produces immediate captures A stack may move to a cell of its own circle A stack may move only part of its stones (thus splitting in two). In this cases, the distance traveled by the moving part is up to the circle radius of the moving part only. Second, optionally insert up to two walls on friendly circles. There is a swap option after the first move. Any stack (friend of foe) not adjacent to an empty cell, is immediately captured. GOAL - When both players pass, the player with more points wins. Score 1 per cell only accessible to the player, 1 point per captured enemy stone.

 

	A circle of a stack of size 3 The blue dots show the circle of the black stack. Every non accessible cell to that piece does not belong to its circle, no matter if it is close enough. These blue dots show where this stack may move and are also valid cells for Black to drop walls. (in these diagrams, walls are represented by red stones).
	A capture sample If it is Black's turn, he may capture the white stack, by dropping a stack at the green dot (the cell is accessible) and drop two walls at the blue dots (those cells are within the circle of the black stack of size 2). Another possible move would be to secure an area of six cells at the upper left sector, by dropping to walls and a stack near the north edge. Can you see how?

Xana can be played on other board sizes. A good rule of thumb is to initially give 2.N friendly pieces to each player, if the board has edges of N cells (the main variant present here has N=8). I wish to thank Bill Taylor for productive suggestions (especially the split and adding of existing stacks) and several matches that showed Xana as a remarkable game.

Here is a sample game (numbers and letters represent stacks, A=1, B=2, C=3...):

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABC         Letters         Numbers
                                   =============================
       . . # . . . . .          1   Ck4  + i4o4     3g8    + e6e10
      . . C # . . . # #         2   Cj11 + g4p3     5o2    + jl3
     # . # # . # 1 2 . .        3   k4k2 + l1f3     o2t3   + m2u2
    . # # . # # # . 1 # #       4   By8  + y6h9     t3>2r3 + w2m4
   . # # . . . . A 1 . # .      5   Bt13 + y10n13   r3>2u4 + wy4
  . # . A . . . . # # # # .     6   Av5  + w6x7     1z7    + x5B7
 . . 1 # . . . . . . . # 1 #    7   y8>1x9 + A8v11  u4>1t5 + g10u6:1
 . . 3 # . . . . . . # . # .    8   x9v10 + x9q14   2z9    + w8z11:1
 . . . # . . . . . . . # 2 .    9   Au12  + r13r15  1f7    + f5d11
  . # # . . . . . . . A # .    10   t13s12 + p13i8  1k14   + l13j15
   # . # C . . . . . # . #     11   Ai6   +  h5h7   1i12   + h11k12??
    . . 1 # . . . B A . .      12   Ar5   +  q4s6   resign
     . . . # # # # . . .       13       
      . . 1 . . # . . .        14        1-0
       . # . . . # . .         15
    
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABC                                   

 remaining letter stones: 3 
 remaining digit  stones: 2

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