Rapid Transit

Toronto Subway Icon

As of 2024, "(t)he Beijing Subway is the longest metro network. Shanghai Metro is the metro system with the highest annual ridership. The New York City Subway has the most stations in the world. The London Underground is the oldest metro system."
Wikipedia - List of metro systems

Rapid Transit is an abstract strategy game of unification for two players. In this game, players swap pieces in adjacent networks to create larger networks. The game ends when both players pass. The player with the largest network wins.

Components

A square 8 x 8 game board.
Two sets of 32 pieces.

Set Up

The game board is centered in the play area, and the playing pieces are placed on the board in a checker board pattern.
Players choose colors.
The starting player is the last player to use public transportation.

Figure 1. Setup

Game Concepts

Network: A network is a set of like-colored orthogonally connected pieces. Singletons are networks. Networks may contain loops if each loop surrounds at least one opponent piece (2 x 2 formations of a single color are not allowed). A network's size is the count of the pieces in the network.
Adjacency: Any two pieces are adjacent if the cells containing them are orthogonal. Two networks are adjacent if they contain at least one pair of opposing pieces that are adjacent.
Terminal: A terminal piece is a piece with zero or one like-colored adjacent piece.
Cornering: A piece is cornered if it is part of a 2 x 2 formation and the other three pieces are opponent pieces.

Figure 2. Terminals

Terminal pieces have zero or one orthogonally adjacent like-colored piece. Here Red has 10 terminals and Cyan has 11.

Figure 3. Cornered Pieces

Cornered pieces are part of a 2 x 2 formation shared with three opponent pieces. Here Red has 4 cornered pieces whose 2 x 2 formation are highlighted in yellow. The two lower formations overlap (c1 and c2). Cyan has 5 cornered pieces.

Game Play

Player turns alternate. On a turn, a player must swap two opposing pieces from adjacent networks or pass if unable to swap. The following swap restrictions apply:

The player must use one of his or her terminal pieces but can swap with any opponent piece in an adjacent network.
A player may not create a 2 x 2 arrangement of like-colored pieces.
After moving, both pieces must have two or more corresponding friendly adjacent pieces, that is, they must no longer be terminal pieces.

Ending the Game

The game ends when both players pass consecutively.

Winning the Game

The player with the largest network wins. If there is a tie, the player with the second largest network wins, and so on. If network sizes fail to determine a winner, the last player to swap two pieces wins.

Please note that for now these game rules may be duplicated and distributed via the web. All rights are reserved. Those that wish to program or sell this game in any form should contact the author at philleduc.pled@gmail.com for permission or a license to do so.

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