Tricouleur 2005

Tricouleur is an abstract strategy game of warring armies. Each player has three types of pieces. Each type of piece, in rock-paper-scissors-style, beats exactly one other type of piece and loses to exactly one other type of piece. The largest army at the game's end wins.

RULES

Each player has an army of three types of pieces that are able to capture the next type, in a cyclic way: think Rock-Paper-Scissors. In terms of the playing pieces' icons, circle = rock, square = paper, X = scissors.

Possible plays:

SPAWN: A player places a duplicate piece into an empty cell that neighbors a piece of their color. LEAP: A player picks up a piece of their color and places it in an empty cell among the twelve "2nd-neighbours," regardless of what is in between. (A piece's 2nd-neighbors = the concentric ring comprising cells that are two steps away from that piece.)

Effects of plays:

RECOLOR: Any weaker opposing pieces that a placed piece becomes adjacent to are recolored as the placed piece (i.e. matching both the color and type of the placed piece). REMOVAL: Any same-strength opposing pieces that a placed piece becomes adjacent to are removed from the board.

Turns:

On Player 1's first turn, they make one play only (i.e. either one spawn or one leap). Thereafter (i.e. starting on Player 2's first turn) each player on their turn chooses TWO of their pieces on the board at the start of their turn; they then choose a spawn or leap for one of those pieces; finally, they choose a spawn or leap for the other piece. (The chosen plays can differ in type.) It is always possible for a player to pass instead of making one or both plays on their turn.

Winning

The game ends when either (a) both players pass consecutively, (b) the board is full, (c) one army is destroyed, or (d) a position is repeated three times. Whoever has the most pieces of their own colours in total, wins.

--Design notes: Tricouleur was designed by Bill Taylor in 2005. It is inspired by the 1990 game Ataxx, which (like the 1992 game Hexxagon) it ports to a hexagonal board. Tricouleur's addition of three different types of pieces, in a cyclic strength-ranking, makes Tricouleur significantly different from either game.