Gamehelpveletas

Introduction & Information

Veletas is a drawless territory game for two players, Black and White. Both players control a number of neutral red pieces and shoot stones of their own color from them. In order to win, a player must claim a majority of neutral pieces by having them surrounded by larger groups of their own pieces than their opponent's.

Terminology

A piece is a (red) shooter, a black stone or a white stone. A group is a set of one or more like-colored, orthogonally adjacent stones. The size of a group is the number of stones in it. Stones on top of shooters are not part of any groups. A trapped shooter is a shooter that cannot make any legal move in the current position.

Setup

The board starts empty. Black starts by placing three shooters on empty squares, then White places the remaining four on empty squares. In the setup, no shooters may be placed orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to each other.

Gameplay

The players take turns, starting with Black.

On Your Turn

Each turn has three components:

1. Move a shooter (optional): The player can (but is not obliged to) move a shooter to an empty square in a straight orthogonal or diagonal line, without jumping over any other pieces.
2. Shoot: The player then must place a stone of their color on the same orthogonal or diagonal line as the destination square of the moved shooter.
3. Check for trapped shooters: If there are any shooters that are trapped and unclaimed, they are claimed by the player who owns the biggest orthogonally adjacent group. If there is no such group or if players are tied for the largest group, the shooter is claimed by the person whose turn it isn't.

Smaller Boards

7x7 board with 3 shooters: Black places one shooter on their first turn, and White places the other two. Whoever claims two shooters wins.

9x9 board with five shooters: Black places two shooters on their first turn, and White places the other three. Whoever claims three shooters wins.