Amazons, by Kadon

Amazons is a very simple, sneaky game. Each player starts with four amazons at the edges of the board. On each turn, a player must do two things:

• First, the player moves an amazon - these move like chess queens.
• Second, the player must fire an arrow, by placing a counter a queen's move away from the piece that was moved.

All amazons and arrows block the square they are in, preventing other pieces from moving over or into that square. The last player to move, wins.

The game plays quickly and well - I'd say a game plays to its conclusion in about 10 minutes (moreover, it is usually obvious well before the end which player has won). From my games so far, I'd say that the best strategy is to wall off regions of the board so that only your own pieces have access to them, while restricting your opponent to ever-smaller regions of the board.

Kadon produce two versions of this game; a cheap one with a cardboard board and perspex pieces, and a deluxe version with wooden amazons and go stones for arrows which is packaged with Transpose.

You can play Amazons by e-mail through Richard Rognlie's PBMSERV