Focus
Opening Position
Alternate Names
Domination
No. of Players
Two or Four
Equipment
A Focus board and eighteen each of black and white counters are required for play. The inventor, Sid Sackson, prescribed making a simple modification to a standard chessboard to create the focus board. The counters will be stacked up to five high and will need to be somewhat stable in stacks this tall; checker pieces with interlocking edges will probably work best.
History
Focus, by Sid Sackson is much akin to a hybrid of a running fight game and a jump and capture game, specifically Lasca.
Objective
The last player who is able to move a stack wins.
Play
The board is setup as shown above. After deciding which player moves first, alternate turns entail the orthogonal movement of a single friendly counter or a stack that is controlled by you. Players control stacks which have their color of counter at the top of the stack. The number of counters in a stack dictates the distance that stack can move. A 2-high stack moves two orthogonal spaces, and 3-high, 4-high, and 5-high stacks can be move three, four, and five spaces, respectively. A stack can be moved over an intervening space whether it is vacant or occupied by another stack controlled by either player. A move may end either on another stack or on a vacant cell. This method of capture can be said to be similar to the stack and tow method of capture seen in other Running Fight games such as Puluc.
Stacks can be built a maximum of 5-high. If a move is made causing a stack to become larger than five counters, all counters in excess of five are removed from the bottom of the stack. Counters removed from the stack in such a way that belong to the opponent of the player making the move are captured and removed from play for the rest of the game. Counters of the player's own color go into that player's reserve and can reenter into the game later.
A player controlling a stack is not required to move the entirety of the stack. This is done by lifting as many counters off of the top of the stack as the number of spaces the player wishes to move. The remainder of the counters remain where they are.
A stack of three counters, controlled by White, moves three orthogonal spaces, jumping over an intervening stack without effect, and landing on top of a stack of four. The turn, however, is not complete.
Show partial move of a stack here
After the movement, the resulting stack of seven reads, from top to bottom: white, black, white, white, black, black, white. A stack, however, can only be five high, so the two counters at bottom are removed. The white one goes back into the reserves of White and the black one is captured and removed from the game.
Strategy
Variations
Death Stacks is played on a 6x6 square square grid with twelve counters per player arranged in stacks of two on their home row at the start of the game. Most of the normal rules of Focus apply, with some additional concepts. In Death Stacks, the edges of the board work as a reflective wall. If the path of a moving stack comes up against a reflective wall, the wall reflects the stack like a mirror. Examples in Diagrams
Also, in Death Stacks, there is no limit to how tall a stack can be at the end of your turn. However, if, at the beginning of your turn, any of your stacks is taller than four counters you must use that current turn to reduce the too-tall stack to four counters or less.
Sources
Sackson, Sid. A Gamut of Games. Castle Books, New Tork, 1969.