Xeno (sphere board game)
Xeno is a board game, initially similar to checkers, played on a round ball (similar to a soccer ball), with hook-and-loop fastener style sticky pieces. It was made by a Canadian company, Profitable Entertainment Products (now out of business). Other names are "Obul" and "The game of O".
Game layout
The board for Xeno is a round ball, with (normally) 12, 24, or 30 spaces. At least one example of a very large sphere with well over 100 spaces (and at least 4-8 players) was seen at one convention.(8 players for 2 on a team gameplay)
Each space on the board is a square; each square touches 4 others by the diagonals.
The pieces are oval, "O"-shaped with a hole in the middle. This keeps the amount of hook-and-loops approximately equal as the pieces are wider in the middle but with about the same number of hooks [1]
Initial setup
Each square is occupied by one piece, placed at random. One person then chooses one of the pieces at random, removes it, and then chooses which other piece to place it on top of, except that it may not go on top of a piece of the same color. The next player then decides which color they want to play.
Movement
You control a stack if your color is on the top of the stack.
Movement is similar to checkers, except that there is no concept of forward, backwards, or "kings". If an opponent has indicated that you have a jump, then you are required to make a jump. Jumps are required to keep going, however you are not required to make the longest possible jump. You are not allowed to jump back to the same space you jumped out from—if a jump continues, it must go to one of the other three spaces. Loops (requiring a minimum of three opposing stacks to jump) are possible.
Jumping is done by moving one stack over another stack, taking the top one piece off that stack and putting it under the bottom of the moving stack, and then landing on the empty space after it. This is the major change from normal checkers-style games. Pieces are not removed from the game—they stack up under your opponents' stacks.
If no jumps are available, then one stack is moved to an adjacent empty space.
A person with no moves available is skipped. In the two player game, this is also the win condition for the other person; in multi-player games, this is not true. An "eliminated" player may be revived as stacks are jumped and pieces revealed.
Winning
The winner is the person with control of all stacks.
Strategy
Very different from normal games, your pieces start out weak (one jump over them by an opponent will capture them), and are built up by your opponent. Note that if you capture three enemy pieces with a single piece stack, then when your stack is jumped by an opponent, your opponent will now have a stack that has to be jumped three times to be captured.
In a two player game, a valid stack will always have at most one section of one color, followed by a section of the second color; there cannot be three or more groups. In multiple player games, that isn't true; stacks can have many bands of many colors.
In multiple player games, a person might have no available stacks, but will have stacks returned to them as the opponents capture pieces covering the missing player's pieces. This style of game makes for a fast pace strategic game.
References
- ↑ A discussion with the game makers at one convention. They informed me that the shapes considered included "X" shapes (which did not pull off well), and that the hole was needed to permit pulling the pieces off the squares easily.