Duile 2024

Duile (from Irish: duille, meaning "leaf") is an stalemate game for two players: Dark green and Light green. It is played on the hexes (cells) of an initially empty hexagonal board. The recommended size is 7 cells per side, but boards of 5 to 9 cells are also valid. Each player has access to a sufficient supply of stones of their own color.

Definitions: A tree is a maximal set of stones of the same color connected to each other. A single stone is also a tree. A leaf is a stone adjacent to only one friendly stone. The size of a tree is the number of stones it contains. A stagnant tree is a tree that cannot increase its size.

Turns:Dark plays first and then turns alternate. On your turn, perform the following actions in order:

Place a stone of your color on an empty cell adjacent to, at most, three friendly groups that are not adjacent to each other. Remove all enemy trees adjacent to a stagnant tree of any color if those trees have an equal or smaller number of leaves than the stagnant tree.

At the end of your turn, the board position must be different from the board position at the end of your previous turn.

End of the game:The last player with stones remaining on the board wins. If at the end of a turn the board position is identical to any of the previous ones, with the same player to move, the game ends in a draw. This is possible in theory, but will likely require player cooperation.

If a move recreates any previous board position at the end of the turn with the same player in charge, the game ends in a draw.

To balance the game, before starting, the first player places a dark stone on an empty cell, and the second player chooses a side. This balancing method is called the pie rule.

Variant:Capture can only be performed by the tree that cannot increase its number of leaves.

—description from the publisher