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Crossfire | Crossfire translates Sid Sackson's Focus to the hexgrid. The rules are very much the same, but I decided to replace the criterion for the maximum height of a stack from the arbitrary albeit well chosen 'five' to a criterion that is implicit in the board. The maximum height of a stack on any given cell, would equal the number of adjacent cells. On the Crossfire board that means two, three, five or six. |
There were two immediate consequences:
- It is possible to aim five-stacks at cells that will hold at most a two- or three-stack. On these cells one can therefore capture prisoners and/or collect reserves, even if they're vacant. This creates fixed target cells in an extremely shifting environment, and thus provides more strategical stability than can be found in Focus.
- Alternating maximum height stacks with an even number of men, i.e. two or six, allow the collection of a reserve from beneath by placing one on top, effectively only reversing colors within the stack. If the opponent does the same, we're in a treadmill, so a ko-rule, as in Go, was implemented.