Triccs is a territory game featuring a new move protocol and Othello-like capture. There's also a hex version of the game.

Rules
There are two players, Black and White. Each has a sufficient number of bicolored stones. Players place and move stones only with their color up. A 'group' is an orthogonally connected number of like colored stones. A single stone is a group by definition. In the rules, adjacencies and neighbors are understood to be orthogonal only.

White starts by placing one stone on the empty board. From that point on players take turns to: Place a stone on a point adjacent to the last stone placed by the opponent, and ... ... place a stone on a on a point that has only vacant points as neighbors. Both placements are compulsory. The diagram shows a possible position at the end of the first phase. Either may end up being the one to start the second phase. When the player to move can no longer make the second placement, then his turn ends and his opponent may start the second phase in which players take turns to: Compulsory place a stone on any vacant point, and ... ... optionally move a friendly stone to a vacant point adjacent to the goup it is part of (a single stone being a 'group' by definition).

Capture
If, and only if, an unbroken straight orthogonal or diagonal row of opponent's stones (or a single stone) is thus enclosed between the placed stone at one end, and the moved stone at the other, then this row is reversed to show the capturing player's color.

Object
The game ends when the board is full and the winner is the player with the highest number of stones on the board.

Note that at the end of the first phase, the number of stones on the board will be equal, but note also that whoever started the first phase, has no bearing on whose turn it will be at the start of the second phase.


Triccs © MindSports