SEEGA

Traditional - Egypt

The game is played on an empty 5x5 board:

DROP PHASE - On each turn, each player drops two stones on some empty cells, except at the board center. MOVE PHASE - One each turn, each player moves a stone. The player who dropped the last stones starts. A stone moves to an adjacent (orthogonal) empty cell. Stones can capture by custodian capture, i.e., an enemy stone is captured when two friendly stones are positioned one on either side of the enemy, either vertically of horizontally (but not diagonally). If a stone moves to a position between two enemy stones it will not be captured. After a capture, the player can move the capturing stone again, as long as it captures again. A stone on the central square is safe from capture. If a player cannot move, his opponent must move again and make an opening for him.  GOAL - The winner is the player that capture all enemy stones, or the one with more stones on board once each player has built an impregnable barrier.

It is possible to create a barrier behind which there are only his own stones and these can be moved without fear of attack. The initial placing of the stones is important in planning such a barrier or in preventing the other player from making one.

Other board sizes are possible. A bigger board provides more strategic concerns.

An example In this position, White has won, since he created a barrier that cannot be attacked, and he has more stones on board.

There is a ZRF to play Seega with Zillions, which is included in the Zillions original game set.

A commercial game Seejeh (from 1975 by Judith Shepard Rosenfeld) is a 7x7 variant of Seega.

Here's a review of the game:

Players decide which player will play as the Tels (pointed pieces) and which will play as Jugs (curved pieces). To setup the board the player using the Tels places two pieces in any space other than the space in the middle of the board. The Jugs player will then place two of their pieces (also not in the middle). Players keep alternating playing two pieces until all of the pieces are on the board. Sometime during setup the Tels player has to place at least one of their pieces on one of the spaces next to the center space.

The Tels player will make the first move. For the first move in the game the Tels player has to move one of their pieces into the center space. After the first move players will move one of their pieces horizontally or vertically to an adjacent unoccupied space.

After moving a piece the player checks to see if they captured one of the other player's pieces. A player captures a piece if the piece they moved sandwiches one of their opponent's pieces between the piece that was moved and another piece belonging to the current player. If the player successfully captures a piece, they can move one of their pieces another space if that would also lead to a capture. The player can keep making moves as long as they lead to additional captures.

During a player's turn they can choose to move one of their pieces in between two of the other player's pieces. This piece is not captured and can only be captured if the other player moves a piece on their turn that would capture the piece.

If a player has no where that they can move a piece or they would have to make a move that would lead to many of their pieces being captured, they can call for a blockade. In a blockade (no matter who called it) the Tels player will remove two of their pieces from the board and the Jugs player has to remove one piece. The players can remove whichever pieces they want as long as the blockade is broken by the pieces being removed.

When one of the players capture the other player's last piece, they win the game. The game can also end if one player has lost too many pieces that they would have no way of winning the game.

This site presents another game with the same name. On a NxN board (N varies from 3 to 9) each player starts with N friendly stone on his first row. Each stone may move one or two cells in any direction (orthogonal and diagonal, it seems) but cannot jump over other stones. Wins the player that makes a orthogonal or diagonal N in-a-row (except, of course, in his first row). In my opinion, 7x7 seems already too big to play with these rules. In my trip to Egypt I saw in a regular shop, a 4x4 board with 4 stones for each player, which seems to fit this description.