Making good on my promise, I give you Chameleon. This game was invented in 2003 by Randy Cox, and is a variant of Hex in every sense of the word. It’s probably the closest game possible to Hex without actually being Hex, but by virtue of one unique and creative change the strategy and feel of the game is completely different. How is this possible? Read on, friend.
(Because it’s so similar to Hex, this article will be very abbreviated. (I did make all new art for it, though, so give me some credit.) If you aren’t familiar with the original game, I recommend you start by reading its rules.)
Equipment
The equipment is identical to Hex. A rhomboidal board of hexes -- usually 11x11 -- plus two sets of around 30-40 tokens in different colors. Print a free board here, use beads or Go stones or something for pieces, and enjoy. Alternately you can play with pencil and paper with these little mini boards. Also good.
spaces. But you already knew that.
Rules
The game is essentially Hex: players take turns placing tokens in an attempt to form a solid connection of tokens between his two sides of the board. Simple, right? Yeah...
Here’s where it gets interesting: you can place either color of stone. You don’t have to place your own tokens. You don’t even actually have your “own” tokens. You can play either color whenever you want, and so can your opponent.
Why would you want to do this? Because, unlike Hex, you win if you form a connection of either color across the board. You don’t have to connect with your own stones like you do in Hex -- once again, you don’t have your own stones.
Because of the nature of the game, you can’t properly call the two players “black” and “white.” So how do you distinguish which edges belong to which player? Some people play with the board at an angle (so that it looks like a classic parallelogram) and call the two players “horizontal” and “vertical.” This is no good. I think that it’s easiest to artificially assign the players colors and have them connect those edges -- so even though you don’t have to play white stones you still have to connect the white edges.
A couple more things to note before I leave you: unlike Hex, it’s possible for both players to form a complete connection at the same time (if there is a solid connection between two corners). If this occurs, the player who placed the final stone, completing the connection, is the winner. Finally, the Pie Rule really isn’t necessary here, since the player playing first doesn’t really have any advantage.
And that’s all there is to it. It should, at the very least, provide an interesting diversion from your normal Hex playing (don’t deny it. I know you love that game).
