ABALONE VS PÜNCT

Abalone is a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Lévi in 1987. Players are represented by opposing black and white marbles on a hexagonal board with the objective of pushing six of the opponent's marbles off the edge of the board. Abalone was published in 1990 and has sold more than 4.5 million units. The year it was published it received one of the first Mensa Select awards. It is currently sold in more than thirty countries. The board consists of 61 circular spaces arranged in a hexagon, five on a side. Each player has 14 marbles that rest in the spaces and are initially arranged as shown below, on the left image. The players take turns with the black marbles moving first. For each move, a player moves a straight line of one, two or three marbles of one color one space in one of six directions. The move can be either broadside / arrow-like (parallel to the line of marbles) or in-line / in a line (serial in respect to the line of marbles), as illustrated below. A player can push their opponent's marbles (a "sumito") that are in a line to their own with an in-line move only. They can only push if the pushing line has more marbles than the pushed line (three can push one or two; two can push one). Marbles must be pushed to an empty space (i.e. not blocked by a marble) or off the board. The winner is the first player to push six of the opponent's marbles off of the edge of the board.

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PÜNCT is a two-player strategy board game. It is the sixth (and final) release in the GIPF project of six abstract strategy games, although it is considered the fifth game in the project. It was released in 2005. PÜNCT won the Games Magazine Best Abstract Strategy game for 2007. The PÜNCT board game is one of six games a part of the GIPF project. This project was created by Kris Burm and is a series of six abstract games. PÜNCT is the 5th game of the project and the board of this game is shaped like a hexagon. This game was released in 2005.[citation needed] PÜNCT is a two-player connection game. The objective is to connect two sides of a hexagonal board, using pieces which cover three hexes each. The pieces can be placed, moved, rotated, and stacked in various ways, restricted by the geometry of the board, the shape of the pieces, and gravity. Players can bring new pieces to the board or can attempt to connect the pieces already in play. The objective of the game is to mislead the opponent. When the players take their first turn, they are not able to use the central hexagon. The PÜNCT piece is used as a point of reference throughout the game, but the PÜNCT piece can't be moved when the player is making a move. Minor dots can land on the other player's piece, but the PÜNCT piece may not. In order to make a move, three dots must be in perfect alignment. The pieces that are on top of all of the other pieces have the most power in this game. The dots on the ends of the pieces must be at the same level horizontally to play this game correctly. In order to make a bridge in this game, you must perform a jump move on a piece already on the board. The positions of the dots at the end don't have to be aligned with the middle or stable horizontally. When determining the winner, a player can lift one piece at a time to determine if a connection was made. To connect opposite sides in this game, players can move pieces on top of other pieces or they can stack pieces to block the opponent's connection, ergo, making a connection for themselves. The actual PÜNCT piece, which is a rounded piece that has one point, cannot be used to make a connection or form a “chain” but rather used as a point of reference.

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