ZONESH

Copyright (c) 2001 W. D. Troyka

This game is played on the following board board:

SOLDIER - Each stone moves and captures to an empty adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) cell space except that a stone  in its home zone (the set of cells where its army begins) cannot move/capture diagonally. GOAL - Win by moving a stone to the opposite corner.

An example White's turn. He moves the stone at c4 to cell [1]. Black captures with b2:b3, and White replies c3:b3. Now, Black cannot defend its corner. If b1-a1, then b3-b2 and wins.

The author says:

Oddly enough, Zonesh was conceived as a 2D variant of the 5D game Skava . The rules are the same except for the ability of pieces in Zonesh to move diagonally once outside of their home zones. This rule compensates for the reduced freedom of a 2D board and makes draws virtually impossible. Zonesh, along with Skava, Breakthrough , and Sidewinder , belongs to a limited class of attainment games characterized by undifferentiated pieces. Declaring a win-zone on a board permits an extraordinary simplification of rules without loss of depth. 

There is a ZRF to play Zonesh with Zillions