Nex?

Has anyone ever heard of Nex? It's a Hex variant that's short for "Neutral Hex" invented by Joao Pedro Neto in 2004, at least according to the awesome book "Connection Games" by Cameron Browne. It looks VERY interesting and I would love to be able to play it here or elsewhere. In a nutshell, Nex has the exact same goal as Hex of placing Black and White stones on a standard Hex board in an attempt to connect opposite sides. However ...

"The novelty ... lies in the inclusion of neutral pieces [e.g., gray] and a special move mechanism. On their turn players may either:

1) Place a piece of their color AND a neutral piece on empty cells, OR
2) Convert two neutral pieces to their color, AND convert a different piece of their color to neutral.

Neutral pieces do NOT count count in any connection."

Also according to Browne, "the two move types are nicely balanced and mean that there will always be an equal number of Black and White pieces at the end of each round. The unusual Type 2 moves allow a form of piece recycling; unwanted pieces can be returned to the neutral state in exchange for converting another pieces in a more useful location. ...

Some passages of play tend to have an element of 'chicken', when players delay making a conversion that may also benefit the opponent. In such cases players tend to play Type 1 moves until absolutely necessary."

I think this game was quoted here before... sounds very interesting, anyway! 8-)

Sounds interesting. But how an a conversion ever benefit the opponent?

Because as part of the 2-neutral-stones-to-your-color-stones move you must also perform a 1-own-color-different-stone-to-neutral-stone conversion. You are also not placing any new stones with a type 2 move, which could have consequences in a race (if that is the correct Hex terminology)

Doh! I imagined that you'd always have some redundancy, some direction that you gave up on. However, of course that doesn't have to be the case always. I'd love to play this variant!

sounds fun

You can try Nex on igGameCenter.