The rules of Tigadi

Three squares sit one inside another. Lines run around each square, and eight straight spokes run from the outer square to the inner one — four through the midpoints of the sides, and four along the corner diagonals. Where lines meet there is a playable point: 24 of them in total.

The corner diagonals are real lines. They carry moves, and three pieces along one of them is a tigadi. This is the single biggest difference from the standard nine men’s morris board, which has no diagonals at all.

Counting every line that can hold three pieces gives 20: twelve around the three squares — four sides each — and eight along the spokes. Adjacency runs along the drawn lines only, giving 40 connections between points.

Each player takes nine pieces, called gotis. The board starts empty and the first player moves first. On this site the first player is Bone, the pale piece; the second is Seed, the dark one.

Players take turns putting one goti on any empty point, until all eighteen are on the board. Nothing moves during this phase.

A tigadi formed while placing counts immediately and captures immediately — it is not held over to the moving phase. This matters more than beginners expect: a great many games are effectively decided before a single piece has moved.

Once every goti is placed, players take turns sliding one of their pieces to an adjacent empty point along a drawn line. One point per turn. This phase continues until the game ends.

A goti never jumps. Not with nine pieces, not with three, not with two. There is no flying, hopping or teleporting at any piece count — which is the second way these rules differ from the common published ones.

Movement is compulsory. If you have even one legal move you must make it, even when every available move breaks one of your own tigadis. You may not choose to pass.

A tigadi is three of your gotis filling all three points of one of the 20 lines. The moment you complete one, you take one enemy goti off the board — resolved straight away, as part of the same turn.

• ·Exactly one capture per turn. Completing two lines with a single move still takes only one piece.
• ·A goti standing inside an enemy tigadi is protected and cannot be taken.
• ·If every enemy goti is inside a tigadi, that protection lapses and you may take any of them.
• ·Captured pieces are gone for good. They do not return to their owner’s hand.

Move a goti out of a completed tigadi and back in on a later turn, and the tigadi counts again — capturing again, and again, every time it closes. Players call this a running tigadi, and building one is the strongest plan in the game.

This is not a loophole. It follows directly from the rule that a completed line captures, and it is the main reason the moving phase is worth playing carefully rather than shuffling at random.

A player with no legal move does not lose. Their turn passes and play returns to their opponent. Being blocked is a setback, never a defeat.

Both players can never be stuck at once. The board is fully connected and every point has at least three neighbours, so if an empty point had no occupied neighbour, its neighbours would have to be empty too — and by induction the whole board would be. A pass therefore always hands the turn to somebody who can move.

Reduce your opponent to two gotis and you win. That is the only way to win: there is no blockade victory, and no win on points.

A game is drawn if the same position occurs three times with the same player to move, or if 100 consecutive turns pass without a single capture. Both counters start only once every goti has been placed.

One subtlety worth knowing: a player can drop below three pieces on the board during the placing phase while still holding pieces in hand. That is not a loss — what matters is the total, not the count on the board.