Last summer I used a square mosaic of

Karl Scherer to design a variant of

“EinStein wurfelt nicht”

without numbers on the stones.

Look at

http://www.althofer.de/scherers-race.html

for more details. Ingo.

I presume that movement can be to any adjacent square, and that capturing takes place as in EWN?

Movement is to adjacent square, but onlny in your main directions.

For instance: When you start in the north-west corner, your

directions of move are to the east and to the south.

(More precisely: For a move it is necessary that your

current square and the target square have a common border,

and the target square has to be on the “right” side of it -

either to the south or to the east (for the north-west starter).)

Your ultimate target square (for winning) is the one in the

south-east corner.

You can move to free squares, and you can capture pieces

of the enemy and of yourself.

I tried this game last fall with one of my nephews. It seems to depend more on chance than regular Ewn. Since the stones change their numbers when moving from cell to cell, there's far less motivation to capture your own stones.

Hello,

MarleysGhos wrote:

> I tried this game last fall with one of my nephews.

> It seems to depend more on chance than regular Ewn.

Right. The game is smaller: only 21 instead of

25 squares; and each player has only four stones

instead of six.

> Since the stones change their numbers when moving

> from cell to cell, there's far less motivation to

> capture your own stones.

Yes and no. Without self-captures a player will be

slow… When you like self-captures so much you may

start with 5 stones on each side (putting a stone

also on the square with side length 2).

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By the way, for people who don't like dice at all

there exists another variant of Ewn, completely without

chance. Name

“Last Stone Forward”

The board is quadratic with 6x6 squares. Each

of the two players (sitting diagonally in front

of each other) starts with 6 stones (without

numbers) on the six squares in his corner.

The players move in turn.

Moves are like in Ewn: one square forward

(either diagonally or orthogonally). You may

go to free squares, capture own stones, captures

stones of the opponent.

The special thing is: you are only allowed to move

one of your backmost stones. Here “backmost” is defined

in terms of the diagonal on which the stone is placed.

For instance, when your home corner is on a6:

a6 is the backmost diagonal, then comes a5-b6, then

a4-b5-c6, then a3-b4-c5-d6, …, d1-e2-f3, e1-f2, f1.

When you have more than one stone in backmost position

you are free to select one of them for the move.

Without self-captures you will be very slow (by

the way: your very first move has to be a self-

capture…). “Last Stone Forward” may, like Ewn, be

played with four players in two teams. It might also

be played on 5x5-board, however, there the player

with the first move has a rather obvious advantage.

Ingo.