Abande Libre

(Design experiment)

This is like Abande with the following modifications.

The pieces are laid out freely on the table.

Setup

2 pieces (here red and blue) are put together on the table.

Then Blue and Red start by placing a piece each, they may not capture.

After that, normal play begins.

Starting position and the 2 possible first moves (“A” and “B”) for Blue. The positions marked with “X” are not allowed, because the initial pieces are weakly connected (see below).

Connections

Like in the original game, all pieces must be connected during the whole game.

However, when placing a new piece the connection strength must be taken into account:

There are weak connections and strong connections. A connection is weak if only 1 side of a piece is touching another piece of any color. A connection is strong, if there are at least 2 other pieces of any color connected.

The red piece is weakly connected.

The red pieces are strongly connected.

New pieces added to the game may always build strong connections.

A weak connection is only allowed adjacent to strongly connected pieces.

Eight possible positions for placing a new piece. The weak connections marked with “X” are not allowed, because the red piece “A” itself is only weakly connected.

The strength of a connection is completely ignored for capture moves.

A capture move. The strength of the connection of the blue piece “A” which is left behind is irrelevant. The same is true for any piece where a new connection is built after a capture move. Note that the height of a stack is not important for the strength of a connection: the emerging 3-stack is weakly connected.

Examples

A typical endgame position.

Red wins by 16-15 points. The sleeping pieces (pieces that are not connected to an opponent piece) score 0 points.