Biloba

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Biloba board and sixteen each of black and white counters, here called stones, are required for play. The Biloba board has a special position that should be marked differently at the very center of the board.

History

Biloba was published on the internet in 2003 by Guillaume Demougeot.

Objective

A player loses if, at the beginning of his turn, he has less than three stones and is unable to capture enemy stones so that his opponent also have less than three stones. In this later case, the game is a draw.

Play

The board is set up as shown above with one player controlling white counters and the other black. Alternate turns entail the orthogonal or diagonal movement of one friendly stone to an adjacent and vacant intersection. When a stone moves to the center cell, it must make an immediate move away from it on that turn. No stone may stay at the center location, here marked with a bright green dot. Any stone may also make an orthogonal or diagonal short jump, over another counter of either color, to a necessarily vacant intersection just beyond.

Capturing is by normal custodianship, i.e., a single opposing stone is captured when placed between two friendly stones (in an orthogonal or diagonal line). Note that multiple capture custodianship, where a row of two or more counters of one color become sandwiched between counters of the opposite color, does not here result in capture. Also, there is no L-Shaped custodianship captures in this game, even for counters at the corners. It is possible, however, to capture more than one (or several) opposing counters in one turn by moving a counter into a position that enacts more than one custodianship capture at the same time. Additionally, after the removal of the captured stone(s), one of the two friendly stones must move to occupy the previous position(s) of the captured stone(s). These movements can create a sort of chain reaction enabling even more captures after the initial movement. The player freely chooses which stone he moves to occupy the former seat of the opposing counter, but all of the positions formerly occupied by opposing counters must become occupied.

No captures can be enacted by moving onto the central location (green dot), a stone moving here must continue to move. The direction may change at the center and a capture may result at the end of the move, but not from the center.

A stone may commit suicide and move into a position between two opposing stones (interception or moving into custodianship) but will become captured by the opponent on their next turn and this capture will constitute the entirety of the opponent's move. A player, say White, may safely move a friendly stone between two opposing black stones if that move results in a capture for White.

Strategy

Variations

Sources

1. Biloba at BoardGameGeek. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/32986/biloba