Bizingo

Opening Position

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Bizingo board and eighteen counters of a specific color for each player, shown here in red and blue, are required for play. Further, two of a player's eighteen counters are marked separately to distinguish them as captains. The other sixteen counters are called soldiers.

History

Bizingo was invented in the mid-1850's in the USA. It is today considered a public domain game and has been published by different companies.

Objective

The objective of both players is capture opposing counters. The first player to reduce their opponent to two counters is the winner.

Play

The game commences with the soldiers and captains situated as above with one player controlling the red "army" and the other the blue. Note the the red army counters are only on green triangular cells while blue army counters are only on grey triangular squares. Never at any time during the game does any counter move to a different colored cell, i.e. blue are always on grey cells while red are always on green cells. This is a unique attribute of this game. Turns alternate and there is no distinction for red or blue moving first. It may be logical to flip a coin (or a reversible counter) to decide. On a player's turn, they move one single friendly counter to any adjacent vacant triangle (triangles way from the edge of the board have a possible six adjacent triangles. (adjacent here meaning that adjacent cells touch at one of their corners). A soldier counter is captured and removed from the board if, at any time it becomes surrounded on three sides by opposing counters, including soldiers and captains. This triple custodianship is another unique attribute of this game. A soldier can be captured by any three of the opponent's counters, but capture of a captain requires one of the capturing counters to also be a captain. If a counter is moved into a triangle surrounded by three opposing counters it is captured, unless the player captures an opposing counter in the process. A counter may be captured on the side of the board with only two opposing counters, but at least one of those two capturing counters must be a captain. The oldest known rules do not state if multiple captures are allowed in one turn, but it seems logical that they would be. If, on their turn, a player moved a counter so as to simultaneously surround two enemy counters, I, for one, vote that they should both be captured.

Sources