Unlur is a connection game -- simple enough. If you’re familiar with Hex or Y, you might think you know what to expect. Place some stones. Try to make some lines. Normal, every day connectionist stuff.
Wrong. Bam. Here comes Unlur -- one of the very, very few asymmetric connection games. Asymmetric, you say? I did say. It’s a very novel concept that uses a brilliant and simple new rule to balance the game and make such a concept work. It was designed in 2002 by Jorge Gomez Arrausi and in the past few years has become pretty well known by connection fans for the creativity of its simple rules. Curious? Read on.
Equipment
The game is played on a hexagonal tiling of hexes of a certain size -- I’ll be using six to a side, but other sizes will work fine. You can print a board out here if you don’t have one already (why don’t you have one already?). You’ll probably need about 30-40 tokens per player -- coins, beads, pebbles, or whatever will work fine.
Rules
As I said before, the game is asymmetric -- although both players make the same moves (drops, like most connection games) they have different goals: white is trying to form a connection between two opposite edges of the board, while black is trying to form a Y -- a connection between three non-adjacent sides of the board.
Obviously, white has a much easier goal: it’s simpler and takes fewer stones to connect two sides rather than three, and even the Pie Rule isn’t going to do much about that. So what to do? Ladies and gentlemen,
The Contract Phase
The contract phase of the game is what makes the game so interesting, and it’s really quite simple to understand. Basically, players take turns placing black and only black stones on the board, which starts empty. During the contract phase, stones cannot be placed on any of the edge spaces, only the interior -- this is to prevent the game being over before it begins.
This continues until one person decides to pass, at which point the contract phase ends. Whoever passed will now play black for the rest of the game -- the “harder” goal, if not for all the black stones he gets to start off with. Once the contract phase ends the new white player places a stone and the game continues normally (that is, as you might expect), with the white player placing only white stones and the black player placing only black.
The reasoning behind all of this is, of course, that the game is now fair. You only play with the hard goal (of making a Y) if you choose to -- each turn you have to decide if the game is balanced or not. If there are too few stones, black would be too hard, so of course you wouldn’t pass then. But if there are too many -- or one less than too many -- your opponent will pass. It’s almost like a game of chicken, and makes for one of the most unique openings of any game. Do you play well to claim black, or try to sabotage your opponent? How many stones is worth it? You get the idea.
Post-Contract
With the players decided, the game continues pretty much as you might expect, with turns alternating between the two players until either black makes a Y or white makes a line, at which point they win.
However, there is another rule added to prevent the possibility of a stalemate (which is very possible): if you complete your opponent’s goal (for example, if black makes a line) without completing your own, you lose the game. It is possible to complete both your goal and your opponent’s goal in the same turn, in which case you win, but if you just complete your opponent’s you lose. So play carefully, young one.
