Equipment:

• Chessboard
• Go pieces, or enough distinguishable counters for each player to cover most of the board (approx 40 each)

• Adjacent = shares an edge (ie 4-adjacency).
• Body = adjacent set of pieces of the same colour.
• Foreign Body = an opponent's body.
• Freedom = a body has freedom if at least one of its pieces is adjacent to an empty square.

Black (X) starts.

Play begins with the following setup:

8 . . . . . . . . 
7 . x x . . o o . 
6 . x . . . . o . 
5 . . . . . . . . 
4 . . . . . . . . 
3 . o . . . . x . 
2 . o o . . x x . 
1 . . . . . . . .
A B C D E F G H

Players alternate taking turns.

Each turn the current player must (1) move one of their bodies, and (2) add a piece to the board adjacent to one of their bodies, in that order.

Movement:

The movement of a body involves taking a piece from the body and moving it to a different square adjacent to the body (including squares adjacent to the piece itself). A body can not move unless it has freedom.

Capturing:

A body's move may land on a foreign body piece if that foreign body has no freedom (ie the foreign body is surrounded). Capture is by replacement.

Winning Condition:

A player wins if their opponent cannot add a piece next turn. This will occur if the opponent has (1) no remaining pieces on the board, or (2) no remaining bodies with freedom.

Notes on play:

The movement rules result in a pseudopod-like movement which may split a body into two smaller bodies (meiosis). Conversely, movement may result in two or more bodies coalescing.

Players should strive to surround foreign bodies and eat them away while giving their own bodies as much freedom as possible. Keeping a foreign body surrounded ties up pieces.

Stalemates cannot occur due to the addition of a piece per turn (I think). Neither player can move on a full board, but the player to place the last piece must by definition win the game.

Symbio © copyright 2001 Cameron Browne.