Havannah

Game of the Year 1981 shortlist Game of the Year 1982: shortlist

Havannah is a strategic board game that was invented by the Dutchman Christian Freeling in the early 1980s.

It was included in the selection list for the Game of the Year in 1981 and 1982.

Regulate

• It is played on a hexagonal board of hexagonal fields. One can find 271 fields, if there are on each side of the board ten fields. However, other board sizes are also possible. Widely used are 8 squares edge length, giving a total of 169 fields. The picture shows just a board with eight fields on each side.
• The board is initially empty.
• The player ( "White" and " Black " ) take turns placing a stone of their color on an empty field, White begins.
• The player who first forms a bridge, a fork or a ring of stones of his color wins. A bridge is a connection of any two corner squares (right shown).
• A fork is a combination of three sides of the board, the corner squares are not counted toward the sides (on the left ).
• A ring is a self-contained compound that encloses at least one is lying box ( in the center ). Whether and which player the enclosed fields are occupied, it does not matter.

Properties

• The game is cycle-free. A position can not be repeated, since the number of blocks grows with every train.
• A draw is possible, but very rare in practice.