Morphid 2025

Morphid is a two-player connection game played on the spaces of a triangular grid of triangles.

On your turn, place a stone of your color on an empty space or replace a weak enemy stone with a friendly stone. A stone is weak if it occupies one of the two central spaces in a four-cell rhomboid and the other three spaces in it are occupied by stones of the opposite color. A stone is also weak if it is adjacent to two stones of the opposite color and the fourth space that would complete the rhomboid is outside the board.

Passing is not allowed, but, if you have no legal moves available, your turn is skipped.

You win if there is a chain of connected stones of your color touching all three edges of the board. Two stones are connected if the spaces they occupy share a full edge with each other. Likewise, a chain touches an edge of the board if at least one of the spaces it ocupies shares a full edge with the edge of the board. Draws are not possible.

To make the game fair, the second player will have the option, on their first turn only, to swap sides with their opponent instead of making a regular move.

Variants Triptide: To further empower defensive play, instead of flipping the weak enemy stone in a rhomboid, swap it with the friendly, non-adjacent stone in the same rhomboid. If there is no such stone because the space it would occupy is outside the board, just flip the weak enemy stone. If, after the swap, the swapped enemy stone is still weak, replace it with a friendly stone.

Pymorph: You may flip an enemy stone to your color if it is adjacent to at least two stones of your color.

NotesMorphid is the triangular version of the square game Morphos. Both games feature temporary interlocking deadlocks that are guaranteed to be resolvable at the latest when they reach the edge of the board. Morphid was inspired by Myramid, which is in turn one possible triangular adaptation of the Morphos variant with simplified capture formations. (Pymorph, mentioned above, is a purer triangular adaptation of this simplified Morphos. Morphid is to Morphos as Pymorph is to simplified Morphos.)

By delaying the resolution of capture fights, the more complex capture formations in Morphos and Morphid make better use of the board and provide for more sophisticated defensive play than their simplified counterparts.

—description from the designer