DIAMOND VS HIJARA

Diamond is a two-player abstract strategy board game invented by Larry Back. The invention was inspired by the game Kensington, which uses a similar board pattern and game objective. Rules for Diamond were conceived in 1985 and finalized in 1994. Diamond introduces a new board geometry and neutral pieces, with the aim of enhancing the game dynamic and lowering the potential for draws. Diamond was featured in the February 2013 issue of Games magazine. The Diamond gameboard consists of interlocking squares and triangles. White and Black each control 12 game pieces of their own color. Neutral pieces (red-colored in the diagrams) enter the game via captures. The pieces are played on the line intersections (called points, as in Go). White and black (but not red) pieces can move along straight lines to adjacent unoccupied points. A player wins by being the first to occupy all four corners (points) of a board square with their pieces. Capturing moves are possible in the Movement phase. If the points of a triangle contain exactly one white and one black piece, either player can capture the opponent piece by occupying the remaining open point ("cornering" the enemy piece on the triangle). The captured piece can be cornered on one triangle (see Example 1), or simultaneously cornered on two different triangles (Example 4). The captured piece is immediately removed from the game and replaced on its point by a neutral piece. If a move simultaneously corners two opponent pieces on two different triangles, then neither enemy piece is captured (Examples 2 and 3). A piece can move safely to a triangle point even if the other two points of the triangle are occupied by enemy pieces (Example 5).

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Hijara is a two-player abstract strategy board game played with small stones. It has been likened to a three-dimensional game on a two-dimensional board. The game was designed by Martin H. Samue| and first printed, as Excel, by American Airlines in their inflight magazine, American Way, on December 24, 1985 and July 22, 1986. It has been sold commercially as Eclipse in 1994, and Hijara (the Arabic word for small stones) in 1995, 2003 and 2006. The original commercial edition of Hijara has a game board of 16 squares, divided into 4 sections numbered 1 through 4 and a score-keeping "ladder" on either end. Players choose either yellow or blue and use 32 same-color stones plus one score-keeper each. Blue starts and players take turns placing their stones, one at a time, on any square, building on those already on the board, to complete and block point-scoring combinations. When a player places a stone on a square, it must be placed in the lowest-numbered open section in that square. So, for every square, the first small stone must be placed on the 1, second on the 2, etc. The game starts with an empty board, and ends with a full board with 3 ways to score points when placement of four same-color stones is completed in any of the following combinations: 10 points - 4 stones of the same color on 4 numbers of a kind in a row - horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. 15 points - 4 stones of the same color in numerical sequence (i.e. 1-2-3-4) - horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. 20 points - 4 stones of the same color in one square. Points are won with a player's own-color stones and are always accrued, never deducted. Several point-scoring combinations may be completed at one time with a single stone. Overlooked points are forfeited and, throughout the game, players keep score on their side of the board with an extra stone of their color. The game is over when the last small stone is placed and all the numbers are covered then, by comparing accrued points totals, the player with the greater number of points is the winner of the game.

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