Synapse-Ice

An Icehouse game for 2 players

What you need:

2 players
An icehouse stash for each player
A 5x6 rectangular grid. (A section of chess-board works well.)

Synapse-Ice Synopsis:

      The board starts out empty.

      The first player chooses any pieces from his stash and places it lying down on any square on the board, pointing to an empty space.

      A 3-point piece points to the square 3 steps away, a 2-pointer to the space 2 steps away, and a 1-pointer to the adjacent space.

      On each subsequent move, the next player must then place a piece in the square pointed to. This piece must also point to an empty space.

      The first player who is unable to make a move loses.


Sample Play:

      In this example, Red has just played a 1-point piece pointing up to the space with the X.
      Green has to play in the X'ed space, and has only two options, a 1-point piece pointing left, or a 2-point piece pointing right.
      He could have played a 3-point piece to the right as well, but he's used all of his 3-pointer already.
      If he points left, red could play a 2-point piece facing down and win immediately. So he points right.


      Red now has 4 options, 3-left, 2-up, 1-right, and 1-down.
      She selects 1-right.


      Green can choose 2-up, 1-up, or 1-down.
      He goes for 1 up, a mistake. (The next few moves are forced, so we'll skip ahead on the diagrams.)
      Red has no choice, she must play 2-down.
      And that leaves Green with no choice, gotta play 1-left.
      Red then plays 3-up (her only move) leaving us with this situation:


      Green has no legal move, and so Red wins!.

      If he had played it right third diagram, Green could have forced a win.
      Of course, if Red had played in right in the second diagram, she could have forced a win first.

      I'll leave figuring out the right moves in each of these situations as an exercise for the reader.



Credit where credit is due

      Synapse-Ice is a semi-original game designed by Joseph Kisenwether for the 3rd Icehouse Game Design Competition 2005.

      It was inspired by the paper & pencil game Synapse, invented by Pierre Berloquin and first published in 1976.