OUTWIT

Copyright (c) 1978 ?? - Publisher Parker Brothers

The game is played on the following 10x9 board with the following setup:
   

BASES - Each player has nine special cells (denoted by the dots), called their bases. SOLDIER  - Each soldier move into any orthogonal direction without jumping any piece, for as many cells possible, until they find an obstacle. A soldier cannot move into the enemy's base. After moving into its own base, the soldier cannot move out. KING - Move like the Chess Queen, i.e., any number of cells on any direction (orthogonal or diagonal) without jumping. A King cannot move into the enemy's base. After moving into its own base, the King cannot move out. GOAL - Wins the player that first places all his pieces inside his base.

 

An example First player moved f4-f1. Second player moved the King directly into his base. This is a bad move, since the King should be used to block the player's own running soldiers.

For more information regarding Outwit:

Outwit, published by Parker Brothers 1978 (does anyone know the inventor's name?)

This is a fine game, but it has gone out of print. You can still get it on eBay from time to time, and it's usually cheap. Or one could easily improvise equipment (this may be a reason so many good games go out of print).

A board is shown at right. Each side has nine pieces, which in the Parker Brothers implementation are wooden disks stained dark and light. Eight of them are undifferentiated, and the last piece (called the "power piece") has a yellow dot painted on it.

The pieces begin on the dots that run diagonally down the 9x10 board, with the power pieces in the center on the larger dots. The light and dark squares in the corners are the goal squares for each side; the object of the game is be the first to move your pieces into your goal square. Once a piece enters the goal area it may not leave again. No piece may enter the opponent's goal area.

The power pieces move as chess queens, any number of squares orthogonally or diagonally but without jumping over a piece. The ordinary pieces move as runaway chess rooks; that is, they can move in any orthogonal direction, but they must move to the farthest legal square in that direction: that is, the last square before the edge of the board, or before the edge of the opponent's goal area, or before a piece. Thus the power piece's ability to stop short in the middle of the board makes it useful as a barrier for your own pieces -- it would be terrible strategy to move it into the goal area before the endgame.

The game was also named L'Africa in France.

I do find a structural problem in Outwit. A player can force a draw, by surrounding the enemy base with his own stones. For e.g., the moves i1-d1, h2-d2, g3-d3, a9-a4, b8-b4, c7-c4 cannot be easily defended by the second player, which will be able only to enter his own King on his base.

Several possibilities to avoid this problem can be used. Two of them might be:

1. Adjacent enemy stones, may jump each other, to the opposite cell.
2. Lines of adjacent stones may push adjacent enemy lines of stones, like in Abalone. If this would force an enemy stone to enter the player's base, the player could pick that stone and place it on any empty cell.