Atoll (2008)
Atoll (2008) Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Stone Placement
Players take turns adding their stones to the board, one stone per turn. Black makes the first placement of the game. Each player will always have a placement available on his turn and must make one.
Object of the Game
To win you must connect two of your islands, which are exactly opposite each other, with a contiguous sequence of your stones. The stones of your islands can be included in the sequence.
In Figure 2 Black wins by connecting his North and South islands. In Figure 3 Black wins by connecting his West and East islands. Note that stones in Black's South island comprise part of the winning sequence.
Generalized Atoll
A generalized form of Atoll can be played on any board with a multiple of four islands. Figure 4 shows some examples. As you can see, Hex (Figure 4a) is merely a special case of Atoll.
The generalized object of the game is as follows: A perimeter path is a sequence of edge cells (the outermost cells in the playable area). To win you must connect two or more of your islands such that the shortest possible perimeter path that connects to those islands connects to at least one more than half the total number of islands. For example, on a 12 island board you must connect two or more of your islands such that the shortest possible perimeter path that connects to those islands connects to at least seven (12/2 + 1) islands. Black wins in Figures 4b and 4c.