Lauba 2024

Lauba (from Proto-Germanic: laubą, meaning "leaf") is a strategy 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 or 9 cells are also valid. Each player has a sufficient supply of stones of their 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. The leaf of a tree is a stone adjacent to at most one friendly stone. The value of a tree is the number of leaves it contains according to triangular scoring, which consists of summing the natural numbers from 1 to the total number of leaves in the tree.

Turns:Dark plays first and then turns alternate. On your turn, place a stone of your color on an empty cell adjacent to at most three friendly stones not adjacent to each other. If you cannot do so, pass your turn; otherwise, passing is not allowed.

End of the game:The game ends when no player can place stones. The player with the highest score wins. To avoid ties, the first player who cannot place stones receives an extra half point.

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:The same rules, except that placement is free.

—description from the publisher