TRICOULEUR

Copyright (c) 2003 Bill Taylor

The game starts at following hexagonal board (the marked stones belong to First player, the others belong to Second):

 

MOVE - On each turn, each player may do one of the following actions: Move a friendly piece by sliding any number of empty cells in a straight line. The moved piece must end up geometrically closer to at least one enemy piece. Capture an enemy piece. Capture is mandatory but the player may chose between options. There are two ways of capturing: Replacement - moving onto an adjacent enemy piece, thus removing it. Whistling - making a valid slide and any capturable enemy piece which was adjacent to the line of movement, but not adjacent to the starting or finishing cell, is removed.  When whistling, red captures white, white captures blue and blue captures red. These are the only valid whistling captures. GOAL - A player loses when he has no pieces left.

 

An example Second's turn. He moves his red stone from a7 to [1], capturing white b3. First is forced to capture it (by replacement) with the white stone at b1.  Then Second whistles f4 to [2] capturing two blue stones. First is forced again to capture that stone. Second was able to capture three pieces in exchange of two pieces of his own.

This game was derived from the 3 player game Triad from Cameron Browne.

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There's an earlier game from Bill that used the whistling by capture, called Whistling Captures designed in 2000:

* On each turn, a player must either move or capture.

* A move is any number of unoccupied spaces in a straight line.
  A moved piece must end geometrically closer to at least one enemy piece.

* A capture is either

(a) by whistling: a piece moves as above, and any enemy pieces
which were adjacent to the line of movement, but not adjacent
to the starting or finishing cell, are removed. It is lawful
to capture more than one enemy piece on each single pass.
Whistling captures may be chained together as at checkers,
i.e. if a change of direction after a capture can result in a
new capture, then that change of direction is allowed. When
making a chain of captures, you cannot pivot directions
immediately upon reaching a checker that you are capturing,
since that checker is not captured until the capturing piece
has moved PAST it (i.e. to a cell to which the captured piece
is not adjacent). Thus, the first cell past the captured
piece point is the first eligible pivot point, with all other
cells beyond it in a straight line also being eligible pivot
points. Note that chained captures, like all captures, are
subject to the mandatory maximum capture rule below (thus, you
cannot make a pivot that captures a few more, if there was an
alternative pivot that would capture a lot more).

(b) by crushing: a piece adjacent to any enemy may capture it by
moving into its cell and removing it.

* Capture is compulsory, with mandatory maximum capture (otherwise free).

* A player loses when he has no pieces left.

* After 20 consecutive non-capturing moves by each player, it is a draw.

EXAMPLE:

So in this position, supposing it is O's turn to move,
the O-player can (& must) move the piece at w19 to G19
(capturing the x at D20 along the way) and then pivot
and move to o1 (capturing the x's at s3 and r2), for a
total of three captures.

___abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNO_
1            . . . . x x . . . . .
2           . . . . x x x . . . . .
3          . . . . . x x . . . . . .
4         . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5        . . . . . . . . . . . . . o o
6       o o . . . . . . . . . . . o o o
7      o o o . . . . . . . . . . . o o .
8     . o o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x x .
15     . x x . . . . . . . . . . . x x x
16      x x x . . . . . . . . . . . . x
17       x x . . . . . . . . . . . . .
18        . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19         . . . . . . o o . . . . .
20          . . . . . o o o . . x .
21           . . . . . o o . . . .
___abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNO_


(The numerical coordinates signify the row.
Letters signify columns. Columns consist of
cells from every other row. E.g. k21 is the
cell immediately above the k at the bottom.
There is no k20; the next cell in the k column
is k19, namely, the second-in-from-the-left cell
in row 19, i.e. two rows above k21.)

(taken from here)