Goal
A player wins when they have captured all their opponent's pieces.
Brax is a two-player abstract strategy board game. It was invented in 1889 (or shortly before) in America by Frederic B. Denham of New York City. [1] The board design is unique. The players move their pieces along paths on the square board; each path is one of two colors. A piece can move one or two spaces in a turn depending upon whether it matches the color of the path. Players attempt to capture each other's pieces.
Brax was featured in The Book of Classic Board Games, written by Sid Sackson and published by Klutz Press in 1991, [2] which ranked it among the top 15 board games in history.
The game is also known as Jinx. A unique feature in Brax and Jinx is that players can call out "Brax" or "Jinx" if their piece threatens the other player's piece(s). This forces the other player to move the threatened piece on their next move (no other piece may be moved), and the threatened piece is jinxed; hence the name of the game Jinx.
There are three-player, four-player, and "fox and geese" (hunt game) versions of Brax.
A player wins when they have captured all their opponent's pieces.
The board is composed of 64 square cells, laid out in eight rows and columns. The board is further designed with lines marked along the borders between cells in one of two colors (e.g. blue and red). Each square cell has three sides in one color and one side in the second color. [1]
Equivalently, the board can be considered as a square grid of 9×9 lines, with two, three, or four lines connecting each of the 81 intersection points; there are four two-line points at the corners of the board, twenty-eight three-line points along the edges of the board, and forty-nine four-line points in the interior of the board. Each connecting line is one of the two colors. In the blank sample board depicted here, each intersection point is addressed with a column (A through I) and row number (1 through 9).
Each player has seven pieces of the same two colors as the marked lines (e.g. blue and red). In the patent, it is suggested the pieces have one side plain and the other side marked to facilitate three or four-player games, where multiple players work together as a team. [1] The starting position for each player's seven pieces is in the rank closest to that player, as designated by the diamonds in Row 1 and Row 9, on the example board illustrated.
Denham describes and illustrates variant game boards with non-square unit cells, including rhombuses, hexagons, and octagons. For each of these -sided unit cells, sides are one color, while sides are the opposing colors, where , rounded down to the nearest integer. [1]
For movement, consider a Blue piece at location E3. Pieces may move two spaces along friendly lines, and one space along opposing lines. The second move on a friendly line does not have to be in the same direction as the first move. That means there are multiple possible moves:
For capture, consider a Red piece at location E6 with Blue pieces nearby. Again, pieces may move two spaces along friendly lines, and one space along opposing lines. That means the following captures are possible:
On the other hand, if the Red piece had just moved from (D6) to location E6 and the Red player called "Brax" or "Jinx", the Blue player is forced to move the Blue piece that is threatened at F5. Because the Blue piece at F5 cannot capture the Red piece at E6 because it is two spaces away along a Red line, alternative valid moves would include (F5)-E5-E4, (F5)-F4-G4, and (F5)-G5-G6. Although the Blue piece also could move (F5)-F6, this would be ineffective in escaping the potential capture, as the Red piece could simply capture the Blue piece on the following turn.
Sternhalma, commonly known as Chinese checkers or Chinese chequers, is a strategy board game of German origin that can be played by two, three, four, or six people, playing individually or with partners. The game is a modern and simplified variation of the game Halma. "Complexity: requires no counting or spelling; even young children can play."
GIPF is an abstract strategy board game by Kris Burm, the first of seven games in his series of games called the GIPF Project. GIPF was recommended by Spiel des Jahres in 1998.
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Banqi or Half Chess, also known as Dark Chess (暗棋) or Blind Chess (盲棋), is a two-player Chinese board game played on a 4×8 grid, or half of the xiangqi board. Most games last between ten and twenty minutes, but advanced games can last for an hour or more. Banqi is a social game, usually played for fun rather than serious competition. A more formal version of Banqi may have evolved into the games Jungle and modern Luzhanqi.
The Game of the Generals, also called GG or GOG as it is most fondly called, or simply The Generals, is an educational war game invented in the Philippines by Sofronio H. Pasola Jr. in 1970. Its Filipino name is "Salpakan." It can be played within twenty to thirty minutes. It is designed for two players, each controlling an army, and a neutral arbiter to decide the results of "challenges" between opposing playing pieces, that like playing cards, have their identities hidden from the opponent.
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This glossary of board games explains commonly used terms in board games, in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games; for terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess; for terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.
