../ Discovered by Eli and Elliot Bridges at a birthday party :) I was thinking about connect 5 from the video game mechenarium, how anoying it was. Then wondered what would happen if you added go to it? It was lots of fun to test new variations and see how just the smallest changes in rullset would drasticly change the feeling of the game.

go5

go5 is a combenation of the games connect 5 and go. Each of the two players place one stone at a time, takung turns. The player first to create a length of 5 stones in their color is declared the winner. By itself connect 5 is kindof an anoying game. Adding go mechanics allows the second player defend themselves more easily. In go, your oponennts stones can be removed from the board by surounding them with your own. Wikipedia have a good elplanation... " Aside from the order of play (alternating moves, Black moves first or takes a handicap) and scoring rules, there are essentially only two rules in Go: - Liberty rule states that every stone remaining on the board must have at least one open point (a liberty) directly orthogonally adjacent (up, down, left, or right), or must be part of a connected group that has at least one such open point (liberty) next to it. Stones or groups of stones which lose their last liberty are removed from the board. - Repetition Rule (the ko rule) states that a stone on the board must never immediately repeat a previous position of a captured stone, thus only a move elsewhere on the board is permitted that turn. Since without this rule such a pattern of the two players repeating their prior moves (capturing stones in same places) could continue indefinitely, this rule prevents a stalemate. " I love go5 because of how fast it ends up being. The rounds go super fast and often end up with supriszing wins. Its fun to loose and fun to win. go and shogi (chess) often feal oppressive if you are loosing?

go5 + shogi

As an extra brain tease, each player can be given shogi peices to place on the board. 2 pawns and a knignt seams to work. Playing with more than this many peices seams to dampen the interesting mechaniscs of go5. One player plays with promoted side, other plays with normal side. These shogi peices are also treated as go stones mechanicly. They can be used to create 5 in a rows and capture enimmy peices go stye. This veriation is fun becuase of all the strange attack staking and seceret wining that can happen.