• Chessboard
• 11 playing pieces (checkers pieces) of two colours

The player wins who first connects his opposing sides of the board.

Rules of Play

The players play black or white (or any other two colours).

Each player "owns" two opposing sides of the board. It is advised to mark the sides of each player (at least by placing all the pieces of the players on his sides only).

The players may decide whether they want to place the board between them with the corners facing to them or whether they want to sit at an right angle with the sides toward them.

At the start of play the board is empty.

One player starts the game. The play then alternates.

At each move the player whose turn it is has three options of play:

a) He can enter one of his pieces onto the board;
b) Move on of his pieces on the board; or
c) Capture an opposing piece with one of his own pieces on the board.

1. Entering a piece

A player may enter his pieces only from his own sides of the board in the following manner:

The piece moves from off the board onto the board in a straight line without interfering with any own pieces or opposing ones (jumping is not allowed). It may stop at any time. Thus there will be a unobstructed straight line from the entered piece to one of the sides of that player.

2. Moving a piece

A player may move one of his own pieces on the board in a straight unobstructed line. Jumping is not allowed. The piece must stay on the board.

3. Capturing an opposing piece

A player may move one of his own pieces (that is on the board) to a field on the board with an opposing piece on it. The opposing piece is then taken off the board and put back to the opponents reserve. He may re-entered it again later. While capturing the piece may not jump over any other pieces. Neighbouring pieces (directly next to the moving piece) may not be captured by that piece.

All pieces always stay in the game (either on the board or as reserve).

Object of the Game

The pieces of a player that are diagonally or orthogonally next to each other are connected.

The player wins the game who is the first to get an uninterrupted line from one of his own sides of the board to his other (opposing) side.

Additional Rules (If Necessary)

It is not allowed to repeat the same sequence of move more than two times. The player that started the sequence has to vary after two occurrences. This should rule out endless play. But even with this rule it is still possible that the game does not come to a solution.

Some of our games went back and forth for quite a while, but finally one player was able to get a good enough advantage to win the game. In our games we did not find a considerable advantage for the first player (yet?). Therefore I do not think a swap rule is necessary so far.

My Ideas About the Game

I found the idea challenging to develop a connection game on the chess board. The chess board is very small for a connection game which would thus run the risk of being trivial. And with the orthogonal topology the game could either get deadlocked too easily (if connection is orthogonal only) or it would make connection too easy (with also diagonal connection).

There are hardly any connection games that include movement of the pieces or capture. And I know of no connection game that has both features, which prompted me to create such a game.

It is of course very important that the game is fun to play beside these "academic" considerations. Apex is the game I finally came up with.

The game is named after the cafe where we meet regularly to play old and new abstract games. It might be a bit misleading for some that the game has no connection to the meaning of "apex." But I do not think that's a problem.

Apex © copyright 2001 Jochen Drechsler.