The Rules of Gonquest

Gonquest is based on the 2000-year-old board game Go. The rules of Gonquest are similar to Go, but simpler. The following rules apply to both.

The game board is a square grid of lines. You make a move by placing a piece of your color on an empty intersection of the board. Pieces do not move, but may be captured.

Two pieces are adjacent if they touch each other. Adjacent pieces of the same color form a chain. A chain includes all pieces of the same color that are adjacent to it. The smallest chain is just one piece.

An empty intersection adjacent to a chain is called a liberty of that chain. A chain that has no liberties is captured, and is removed from the board.

A move that fills the last liberty of a chain captures that chain. You can even capture your own chain if you play on its last liberty without capturing another color. If you capture another color, your chain will gain liberties, so it is not captured. (In most versions of Go, a move that captures your own pieces is illegal.)

The goal is to build chains to surround territory on the board. When the game is over, each empty intersection surrounded by your color adds one point to your score.

A chain of empty intersections is surrounded if all adjacent pieces are the same color.

There are two major differences between Go and Gonquest:

• Go is normally a two player game. Gonquest can have up to nine players on one game. (More than nine colors would be hard to tell apart.)
• In Go, the players take turns. In Gonquest, players may move whenever they have a piece to play. Pieces are allocated at a steady rate, set for each game (for example: 1 per hour, 20/hr, 600/hr).