The Power of Two

The Power of Two is an abstract 2-player game, designed by Arthur Blumberg and produced by Kadon games. As you'd expect from Kadon, it comes with an attractive wooden board and pieces, though the board is plywood, and a little flimsier than I've come to expect from Kadon. The game itself is very unusual indeed; the board consists of a bewildering arrangement of lines, forming numerous triangles of varying sizes. Each player starts with two pieces on the board and fourteen pieces in reserve.; the object of the game is to get all your pieces into play by making triangles...

Each turn, a player slides one of their pieces any distance along one of the lines. If the piece is moved so as to complete two sides of a triangle in conjunction with another piece, then the player places a piece onto the board from his reserves at the other corner of the triangle; it is possible to place several pieces on the board as a result of one move. Once the new piecces have been added to the board, all the player's pieces which were used to generate the new pieces are aged - they are flipped over, or removed from the board if they have already been flipped.

This concept of aging is what makes the game interesting; each piece can be used to introduce a new piece (or pieces) twice before it is removed from the board, so it is important to (a) introduce multiple pieces with each move as often as possible, and (b) use your opponent's pieces as often as possible. After a few plays, the strategies of this game are far from clear, but it looks like one good strategy is to wall off your opponent's pieces into a small area of the board, restricting their options, and making it difficult for them to bring new pieces onto the board.

All in all, a very promising game, and one that I look forward to exploring over the next few months.