Siege Master

Siege Master is a two-player game of territorial conquest that requires a keen eye and nerves of steel.

Components

A gridded map of about 200 hexes
15 neutral fortress tokens (gray)
2 sets of 8 fortress tokens (red and blue)
2 sets of 25 army tokens (red and blue). An army token covers four empty hexes in a row (1x4).

Setup

Players create a map-like shape using a hexagonal grid, and then alternate placing the neutral fortresses such that most fortresses are at least three spaces from all other fortresses. Each player takes a matching set of army and fortress tokens. See sample setups in Figures 1 to 7 and see the Click and Play section below to actually play test these maps!.

Figure 1. North America

Figure 2. South America

Figure 3. Europe and Near East

Figure 4. Africa

Figure 5. Asia

Figure 6. Australia and Islands

Figure 7. Hexagon

Important Concepts

Fortress Siege: One or more fortresses are captured, if they are in an area of zero or more empty hexes that is surrounded by army tokens, the edge of the grid or both, and no armies can fit into this area. See examples in Figure 8.

Adjacent Armies: Two armies are adjacent if the hexes that they occupy share at least one common hex edge.

Figure 8. Siege examples. None of the neutral fortresses are captured yet because an army can fit somewhere within their areas. The last played blue army (on the east coast indicated by dots on the blue hexes) captured four fortresses!

Game Play

To start the game, Red places an army anywhere on the map-grid. If this move completes the siege of any fortresses, these fortresses are captured and Red replaces the neutral fortresses with his or her own.

On Blue’s first turn, if Blue feels that Red’s move was too good, he or she may replace Red’s army and fortress tokens that were just played with blue tokens. Otherwise, Blue takes a normal turn. Whatever Blue decides, players then take turns performing the following player actions. Players may not pass a turn.

Player Actions

On a player’s turn, if the player’s opponent did not capture a fortress on his or her last turn and it is possible to play an army adjacent to the opponent’s last placed army, then the moving player must do so. Otherwise, the moving player can play an army token anywhere on the map-grid.

After placing an army, the moving player claims any newly captured neutral fortresses by replacing these fortresses with his or her own.

Winning the Game

The player that captures more than half of the fortresses on the map-grid wins the game.

Download and Play

Click here to download the Flash version of the game but before you do read the following:

The Flash game is not a "finished" product. It was created to play test Siege Master and a few variants. You are expected to adhere to the adjacency rules on your own.
Use the drop-down menu to choose a map and then click on New Game to start a new game with the selected map.
The Restart button simply clears all army tokens and resets the forts to their neutral state.
Forts functions the same as the Restart button but in addition it redistributes the neutral fortresses.
After enclosing a neutral fortress click on it to claim it. The clicked-on fortress will change to the color of the last played army token. Clicking on a claimed fortresses will change it back to neutral.

Figure 9. An example of a random map generated by the Flash/Shockwave app.

Variants

Free movement: All the above rules apply except that armies do not have to be played adjacent to the last played army.

Pacifist: In this misère variant, you want to avoid capturing fortresses. All the above rules apply except the winner is the player who captures the least number of fortresses.

Designer Comments

This game was derived from another game I designed called Nooks. Nooks uses a hex board, free movement and players try to surround small areas called nooks - areas that cannot contain a 1 x 4 token. (Sound familiar?) Nooks works okay but lacks tension through out the game because of the free movement. The chaining of army tokens increases this tension. This idea was inspired by the game of Freedom which was designed by Veljko Cirovic and Nebojsa Sankovic. You can play Freedom at Arty Sandler's five-star IGGameCenter web site http://www.iggamecenter.com/info/en/main.html.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Néstor Romeral Andrés for his assistance and persistence in helping me clean up the Siege Master rules. It took many tries to to simplify the movement rule and remove unnecessary military jargon. Please visit his outstanding games-to-go web site, http://nestorgames.com/index.html. You might find something you will like there. Sadly, Siege Master is no longer available for purchase at Nestorgames.com as of 2019 due to cost considerations.

Please note that these game rules may be duplicated and distributed via the web but the rules may not be altered and full credit must be given to the designer, Phil Leduc. Otherwise, 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.