Take 2024

Take (Japanese for "bamboo") is a game for two players, Red and Blue. It is played on a hexagonal board of any size initially filled with "clods" - neutral, brown stones.

PlayPlayers take turns placing a stone of their own color. To place a seed (a stone not adjacent to any friendly stones), you must remove a clod and replace it with the seed. Other than a seed, you can place a stone on any unoccupied or clod-occupied cell (after removing the clod) to form exactly one adjacency with a friendly stone.

A bounded group is a monocolored group which cannot be expanded with the placement of an adjacent, like-colored stone. If your placement bounds any groups, including the group expanded by your placement, immediately remove all groups so bounded, concluding your turn.

To win, you must remove all enemy stones from the board. If your placement eliminates all red and blue stones, you win. If your placement eliminates all friendly stones while enemy stones remain on the board, you lose.

High-churn variantEach cell of the board is initially covered by a brown tile instead of a brown stone. To place a seed, remove an unoccupied tile and replace it with the seed. Other than seeds, stones can be placed subject to the adjacency rules described above, but by placing on a cell with no tile and no stone or by placing on top of an unoccupied tile.

The object of the game and group removal rules are the same in both versions.

Design notesTake is a long sought (by me) free-form Tanbo. That is, new seeds can be added. Michael Amundsen made a material contribution to the design of Take.