Sixfold

Sixfold

Sixfold is a two-player abstract connection and grouping game played on exactly 36 active cells. There are 36 unique stones in the game, each formed by one of 6 colors and one of 6 shapes.

The two roles are:

• Shapes
• Colors

The Shapes player moves first.

Turn Structure

At the start of the game the board is empty and 6 random stones are revealed in the offer.

On each turn, a player:

1. may optionally move one stone already on the board in a straight line along the current board geometry
2. must place one offered stone onto an empty active cell

After placement, the offer is refilled back to 6 stones until the draw sequence is exhausted.

Random Board Layouts

The board layout is not a separate variant. It is selected randomly as part of the setup move.

Every Sixfold random setup uses one of these 4 layouts:

• Square: 6x6 board
• Hex: hex-style adjacency in 6 directions, with the center cell removed
• Cross: 7x7 board with the corner triads removed and the center cell removed
• Triangle: a hexagon-based isosceles triangular board with side length 8, similar in shape to the WYPS triangle boards

All four layouts contain exactly 36 active cells.

Movement

If a player chooses to move a stone before placing, the stone moves in a straight line until blocked by:

• the board edge
• an inactive cell
• another stone

On square and cross boards, movement uses 4 orthogonal directions.

On hex and triangle boards, movement uses 6 hex-style directions.

Scoring

Scoring is evaluated after the last stone is placed.

Shapes and Colors score independently. For each connected group of size N, the score is:

N * (N - 1) / 2

The player with the higher total score wins. If both totals are equal, the game is a draw.