ZONESH

Copyright (c) 2001 W. D. Troyka

This game is played on the following board board:

SOLDIER - Each stone moves and captures to an empty adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) cell space except that a stone  in its home zone (the set of cells where its army begins) cannot move/capture diagonally. GOAL - Win by moving a stone to the opposite corner.

An example White's turn. He moves the stone at c4 to cell [1]. Black captures with b2:b3, and White replies c3:b3. Now, Black cannot defend its corner. If b1-a1, then b3-b2 and wins.

The author says: Oddly enough, Zonesh was conceived as a 2D variant of the 5D game Skava. The rules are the same except for the ability of pieces in Zonesh to move diagonally once outside of their home zones. This rule compensates for the reduced freedom of a 2D board and makes draws virtually impossible. Zonesh, along with Skava, Breakthrough, and Sidewinder, belongs to a limited class of attainment games characterized by undifferentiated pieces. Declaring a win-zone on a board permits an extraordinary simplification of rules without loss of depth. There is a ZRF to play Zonesh with Zillions