Hex-A-Gon Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Contents
• Set-Up
• How to Play the Game
• Winning the Game
• Expanded Game Play
• Solitaire
• Treasures
  • All That Glitters…
  • Amulets of Power (Freeze)
  • Red Amulet of Animation
  • Red Amulet Blast

Contents

Hex-A-Gon contains everything you need to play, for 1 to 5 players (see Solitaire, p.5, for rules on single player games).

Gameboard: The gameboard is where the action of Hex-A-Gon takes place.

Knights (playing pieces): There are 60 large hexagon-shaped wooden playing pieces, referred to as knights in the rules.

Treasures (playing pieces): There are 10 small hexagon-shaped wooden playing pieces, referred to as treasures in the rules. These playing pieces are not used in the standard game (see Expanded Game Play, p. 3).

Rules booklet: The Rules Booklet is what you're reading right now.

Set-Up

First, unfold the map and lay it out on a smooth surface with enough room around the edges for the knights you'll seize during the game.

Next, place a knight on every hex on the gameboard leaving one hex open (the standard is the central hex, but any open hex, except along the edge, will work fine).

You're now ready for the game to begin!

How to Play the Game

Randomly determine who will take the first turn. Play proceeds clockwise around the table for the rest of the game.

Every turn, a player chooses and moves any knight on the board, jumping over other adjacent knights in order to seize those knights. When a player seizes a knight, he immediately removes it from the gameboard and places it where he can count all seized knights at the end of the game.

Any knight movement must conform to the following rules:

• Only a single knight can be moved; once a player starts his movement, he must stay with the selected knight and cannot change to a new knight.
• A knight can only move by jumping over an adjacent knight.
• The jumping knight must land in an open hex.
• The jumping knight must land in one of the three hexes directly across from the hex where it began its jump (you cannot land in a hex adjacent to the hex where the knight began its jump; see the Legal Move diagram).
• Hexes opened up by seizing a knight, as well as the hex opened by the jumping knight, are legal for follow-up jumps later in the same turn.
• A player can move a single knight any number of jumps on the gameboard during a turn, provided the player follows the rules above.
• A player must seize at least one knight on his turn, but is not required to make further jumps, even if a move obviously exists.
• Once a knight is removed from the board, it may not be returned.

First Player: The first player, on the first turn only, can only seize 1 knight.

Hint: When seizing multiple knights in a turn, players are encouraged to keep one hand on the knight they are moving, while taking away the knight they've seized with their other hand. This will ensure absolute clarity about which knight is moving and which knight(s) have been seized.

As shown on the Standard Play diagram on the following page, during a turn Collin decides to move the knight in Hex A. He first jumps the knight over Hex B into the open Hex C and seizes the first knight in his path. He then jumps his knight over Hex D back into the now open Hex A and seizes a second knight. (He could have first jumped over the knight in Hex D to the open Hex C and then jumped over the knight in Hex B back to Hex A, for the same results.) Next, he jumps his knight from Hex A over the knight in Hex E into open Hex F and seizes the Hex E knight (his third). He then jumps over the knight in Hex G into the open Hex H and seizes a fourth knight.

If Collin wished, he could jump over the knight in Hex I into open Hex K and seize a fifth knight. However, once he made that move, his turn would be over, leaving the next player open for a great set of jumps to seize four knights: the opponent could select the knight in Hex J and jump over Collin's knight in Hex K (where Collin would have left it if he moves to grab a fifth knight) into the now open Hex B (open because Collin seized that knight); the opponent's knight can then jump over the knight in Hex M into open Hex N; then over the knight in Hex O into the open Hex P; finally, over the knight in Hex Q into the open Hex R.

Instead, Collin decides he's content with seizing four knights and leaves his jumping knight in Hex H. In place of potentially seizing four knights to keep up with Collin, his opponent can now only grab one knight: either jumping the knight in Hex I over the knight in Hex J, or jumping the knight in Hex J over the knight in Hex I.

Of course, Collin actually chose the wrong knight and wrong path to follow to maximize seized knights. With the board set up as it is in the diagram, a player can seize 9 knights. See if you can figure out how to do that!

Winning the Game

The game ends when no further jumps can be made.

Players count up the number of knights they seized during the game. The player with the highest number wins! If two or more players have the most number of knights, the game is a tie.

Expanded Game Play

The following rules provide expanded game play options for additional enjoyment of Hex-A-Gon!

Solitaire

When playing solitaire, all the standard rules for movement and seizing knights apply, and the rules for scoring are the same. In solitaire, the player simply attempts to achieve the highest score possible, with the fewest knights left on the gameboard. A perfect solitaire score would be 59 points; that is, 59 knights seized, with 1 knight left on the board.

Treasures

The 10 small hexagon-shaped playing pieces (treasures) may be used to add more game play options.

Ten knights have a hollow cavity in their base. During set-up, place the ten treasures in these cavities, and then randomly place those knights around the board so that no player knows where they're located. When a knight is seized that also contains a treasure in its base, the player seizes the treasure as well. What the treasure does depends upon which of the expanded game play options are in use; players must determine which rules are in effect before the game begins (see below).

Once revealed, leave any treasures sitting in their hex until the player has finished his turn (these hexes may still be used for jumping). When the player has finished seizing his knights, resolve all treasure effects in any order the player desires and remove the treasures from the gameboard (see Red Amulet Blast, p. 6, for the exception).

Hint: When setting up with treasures, place all the treasures in the hollow cavity of the appropriate knights. Next, place all other knights standing up next to them on the gameboard. Then push and mix all the knights together so there is no way to know which knights have a cavity and which don't. Once you've mixed the knights up, slide each into the middle of an open hex. Be careful not to lift any knights, as that will give away whether or not it has a treasure.

All That Glitters…

The following sets of rules turn treasures into points that players must add or subtract from their final scores. At the end of the game, after the players count up all their seized knights, they either add or subtract the value of the treasures they seized for a final score, based on which rules are in use for a given game.

Piles of Gold: In this version, all treasures provide bonus points at the end of the game in the following manner: green = +1, blue = +2, red = +3.

Nothing But Traps: In this version, all treasures generate negative points at the end of the game in the following manner: green = –1, blue = –2, red = –3.

Tricks and Treats: In this version, treasures provide bonus points or generate negative points at the end of the game in the following manner: green = –1, blue = –2, red = +3.

Amulets of Power (Freeze)

The following are a set of rules that turn treasures into "amulets of power," which allow players to affect the board during game play, altering how players move and seize knights across the board.

In all instances, a player may choose to use or ignore a treasure's power.

Green: Select one knight adjacent to the hex occupied by the green treasure (if any) and turn that playing piece on its side. For the rest of the game this playing piece is now frozen and no knight can jump over that hex or seize the playing piece.

Blue: Select and freeze up to two knights. The first knight must occupy a hex adjacent to the treasure. The second knight to be frozen may occupy a hex adjacent to the treasure or adjacent to the first knight. Turn the playing piece(s) on their sides. No knights may jump over those hexes or seize these pieces.

Red: Select and freeze up to three knights. The first knight must occupy a hex adjacent to the treasure. The second knight to be frozen may occupy a hex adjacent to the treasure or adjacent to the first selected knight. The third knight must be adjacent to the treasure or one of the first two knights selected to be frozen. Turn the playing piece(s) on their sides. No knights may jump over these hexes or seize these playing pieces.

Additional Rules: If a frozen knight reveals a treasure when it is placed on its side, the treasure is removed from the board and has no effect.

A player can choose to freeze the jumping knight at the end of a turn.

In the Amulets of Power (Freeze) diagrams, those rules are in play as Jamal takes his turn. In Diagram I, Jamal selects the knight in Hex A and jumps it over the knight in Hex B into the open Hex C. When Jamal moves the first knight, he discovers a blue treasure underneath. As he seizes the knight in Hex B, he discovers a red treasure underneath that knight as well. He has no other move to make, since the knight in Hex J is frozen (meaning he can't jump over it into open Hex K), so his turn is over. Now Jamal has two different amulets of power he can resolve in whichever order he chooses: he decides to resolve blue first, then red.

The blue treasure allows Jamal to freeze two knights. He could choose to freeze only one or none, but he chooses to freeze two. He selects the knights in Hexes D and F, both adjacent to the hex containing the blue treasure, and turns them on their sides; they're now frozen and cannot be jumped over or seized. Diagram II shows the end of this action.

Next he resolves the red treasure, which allows Jamal to freeze up to three knights. As with the blue treasure, he could decide to freeze only one or two (or even none), but he goes for all three. If Jamal chose, he could simply select Hexes E and G for his first two knights to freeze (he can't select the knight in Hex J because it's already frozen, and he can't select the knight in Hex D because he just froze that knight using the blue treasure; while Jamal could decide to freeze the jumping knight in Hex C, he chooses not to).

However, Jamal wants to spread the frozen knights out. He first selects the knight in Hex G and turns it on its side. While that knight reveals a green treasure when it is turned on its side, because the treasure is revealed during a freezing, it is ignored and discarded from the gameboard.

Hexes J, F and H are adjacent (and occupied) to the knight in Hex G, so in theory Jamal could freeze knights in any of them. However, he can't freeze the Hex F knight because he already used the blue treasure to do that (and the knight in Hex J is already frozen). Jamal selects Hex H and freezes that knight by turning it on its side.

For the third knight, Jamal can freeze either Hex I or Hex L, which are adjacent to the knight in Hex H (Hexes F and G are already frozen). Jamal likes the idea of a straight line of three frozen knights, and so selects the knight in Hex I and turns it on its side. Diagram III shows the end of this action.

Red Amulet of Animation

Under these rules, the green and blue treasures use the same rules as Amulets of Power (Freeze). However, the red treasure doesn't freeze knights. Instead, it allows a player to either unfreeze a knight, or place one of his own seized knights back on the gameboard. Whenever a red treasure is revealed and can be taken (see Additional Rules, p. 5), the player takes the treasure.

At any time during his current turn or any future turn, the player can spend the red treasure to unfreeze a knight or place one of his own knights back on the board. The player selects the knight to be unfrozen and stands it up, or takes a knight from his seized cache and places it back in any hex on the gameboard, and then discards the red treasure.

Red Amulet Blast

Under these rules, the green and blue treasures use the same rules as Amulets of Power (Freeze). However, the red treasure doesn't freeze (or animate) knights. Instead, whenever a red treasure is revealed (regardless of how; see Additional Rules, p. 5), all knights adjacent to the treasure are pushed into adjacent hexes if those hexes are empty.

The players use the following rules to move knights:

• Unlike the Amulets of Power (Freeze) treasure use, where a player may choose whether to use the treasure's power, a red treasure always explodes in a blast when using the Red Amulet Blast variant.
• Unlike all other treasure use, a blast stops play after the knight has been seized and is resolved before the player continues his movement (if any).
• A knight can only be pushed into an open hex.
• A knight is never pushed more than one hex.
• A knight should be pushed directly away from the blast. If it cannot be pushed directly away, it is pushed into one of the two hexes adjacent to the hex directly away from the blast; in this instance the player chooses which hex the knight moves into. If all three hexes are occupied, the knight will not move.
• This power does not affect frozen knights or revealed treasures.
• The jumping knight is moved by the blast like any other knight, using the rules above.
• The player resolves the knight(s) movements in whichever order he chooses.

Additional Rules: If a red treasure blast is revealed under the jumping knight and the first knight it seizes reveals another treasure, remove the seized knight and resolve the red treasure blast immediately. Then resolve the second treasure's effects at the end of the turn, as normal.

Hint: To help make moving knights easier after a blast, players can mentally draw a direct line of hexes, starting in the hex containing the red treasure, through the adjacent hexes of knights that may move, and into the next ring of adjacent hexes. If a knight can be moved into one of those hexes, it must be moved there. If it can't, then the player can see if either of the adjacent hexes are open and if so, decide where to ultimately push each knight.

In the Red Amulet Blast I diagram, Suzanne jumps a knight over a hex that reveals a red treasure. Since the Red Amulet Blast rules are in effect, Suzanne seizes the knight and then stops her movement to resolve the blast.

To begin, she mentally draws arrows from the hex containing the red treasure through the six hexsides into the adjacent 6 hexes, and then extends those lines into the next hex row. She knows that if a knight can move into that hex, they must be moved into that hex. If they can't be moved into that hex, then she can see if they can move into the right or left hexes from that hex. Finally, if there is a knight occupying all three of those hexes, the knight in the adjacent row of hexes will not move.

She randomly determines to begin along Arrow 1; Suzanne moves her jumping knight. She then moves to Arrow 2 and pushes that knight back along the arrow line. The knight along Arrow 3 can't move, as it is frozen. There is no knight adjacent along Arrow 4, as that's where the jumping knight started. She can't move the knight along Arrow 5 because there's a knight behind it, and she can't move it to the hex on the left as there's a knight there. However, she can move it to the hex on the right and so she does. Finally she notes that the adjacent knight along Arrow 6 can't move directly back as there's a knight behind it as well (the fact that the second knight is frozen has no effect on whether the adjacent knight along Arrow 6 moves or not), and she can't move it into the hex on the left as she just moved a knight there, so she moves it to the hex on the right.

In the Red Amulet Blast II diagram, Suzanne has moved all the knights appropriately, and she can now continue her turn. She jumps her knight in Hex A over the knight in Hex B into the open Hex C, leaving her with two seized knights, and now her turn is done.