strands
Strands is a puzzle game where you decide between making a few big moves or many small ones.
"Strands has a wonderfully simple set of rules, but creates an incredibly deep emergent decision tree. Its rules are so simple it can be taught to children in minutes in its entirety. It's amazing, for how simple the rules are, how much one can look ahead into their strategy. I was very impressed with this game. It is in a word: Elegant."
- Emerson Matsuuchi, designer of Century: Spice Road
Its rules fit in two tweets:
One player has white stones, the other player has black.
1. To start, Black covers any space marked "2".
2. From then on, starting with White, the players take turns. On your turn, cover up to X empty spaces marked "X". For example, you could cover any 3 empty spaces marked "3".
3. The game ends when the board is full. The player with the largest contiguous group of stones wins. If tied, compare the players' second-largest groups, and so on, until you come to a pair which aren't the same size. Whoever owns the larger wins.
LB_NUMBER_OF_PLAYERS: 2
Game duration: 9 mn
Complexity: 1 / 5
Play strands and 960 other games online.
No download, directly from your web browser.
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Play strands and 960 other games online.
No download, directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Setup
Choose a board layout.
One player has white stones, the other player has black.
Gameplay
To start, Black covers any space marked "2".
From then on, starting with White, the players take turns.
On your turn, cover up to X empty spaces marked "X". For example, you could cover any 3 empty spaces marked "3".
End of Game
The game ends when the board is full. The player with the largest contiguous group of stones wins. If tied, compare the players' second-largest groups, and so on, until you come to a pair which aren’t the same size. Whoever owns the larger wins.
Note that a tie is impossible.
