Gamehelptrike

Summary

Trike is a combinatorial abstract strategy game for two players. The game revolves around setting traps, dismantling opponent traps, and maneuvering a shared piece into your own trap to win.

Trike has high clarity due to the simple movement protocol, singular win condition, low branching factor, and easy-to-read board state. However, Trike is dramatic because it offers players many chances to make fatal errors.

Trike is partisan, draw-less, finite, cycle-free, always decisive, scalable with board size, and balanced with the pie rule.

Rules

Players take turns moving a neutral pawn around on the board. The pawn can move any number of empty points in any direction in a straight line, but cannot move onto or jump over occupied points. When a player moves the pawn, first they place a checker of their own color, onto the destination point. Then they move the pawn on top of it. When the pawn is trapped, the game is over. At the end of the game, each player gets a point for each checker of their own color adjacent to or underneath the pawn. The person with the highest score wins.

At the beginning of the game, the first player puts a checker on any point of the board, with the pawn on top of it. At this time only, the second player has a one-time chance to swap sides instead of making a regular move.