| The Ring Realms are 16 boards based on the Platonic and Archimedean solids. There is currently one game that plays on all of them, Ring Majority, a territorial game in which players make captures by forming complete rings, the goal being to finish with the most stones on the board.
Generic Rules of Ring Majority
Each player starts with exactly enough stones to fill all the positions (faces, edges, and vertices). The number of positions for each board is indicated in the title line of the game. Since players place exactly one stone per turn, this also represents the maximum number of turns in a game. Note that the top face of each solid has been removed to make the rest visible; the lost face is represented by a large area in the upper-right-hand corner. A stone placed in this area is considered to be adjacent to all the outer edges and vertices.
There are three types of rings:
- The two faces and two vertices around an edge;
- All the vertices and edges around a face;
- All the faces and edges around a vertex.
In a turn, a player places a stone on any empty face, edge or vertex, and then all captures are resolved as follows.
For each complete ring formed of stones from both players:
- If there is an equal number of each player's stones, no captures take place with that ring.
- If the moving player has the most stones in the ring, the other player's stones in the ring are captured (and never returned to the player).
- If the non-moving player has the most stones in the ring, and the ring is still intact after all the moving player's captures have been made, then the moving player's stones in the ring are captured (and never returned).
Thus sacrificial moves are allowed, and in fact may sometimes be the only legal moves.
The game ends with stalemate (usually when Red runs out of stones to place), or with three-fold repetition, but the winner (if any) is always the player with the most stones on the board.
(End of Ring Majority rules)
The Ring Realms, in order of size (number of positions), are:
- Tet (tetrahedron): 14 positions (4 vertices, 6 edges, 4 faces)
- Cube (hexahedron): 26 positions (8 vertices, 12 edges, 6 faces)
- Tut (truncated tetrahedron): 38 positions (12 vertices, 18 edges, 8 faces)
- Co (cuboctahedron): 50 positions (12 vertices, 24 edges, 14 faces)
- Doe (dodecahedron): 62 positions (20 vertices, 30 edges, 12 faces)
- Toe (truncated octahedron): 74 positions (24 vertices, 36 edges, 14 faces)
- Tic (truncated cube): 74 positions (24 vertices, 36 edges, 14 faces)
- Sirco (small rhombicuboctahedron): 98 positions (24 vertices, 48 edges, 26 faces)
- Snic (snub cube): 106 positions (24 vertices, 52 edges, 30 faces)
- Id (Icosidodecahedron): 122 positions (30 vertices, 60 edges, 32 faces)
- Girco (great rhombicuboctahedron): 146 positions (48 vertices, 72 edges, 26 faces)
- Ti (trucated icosahedron/buckyball/football/soccer ball): 182 positions (60 vertices, 90 edges, 32 faces)
- Tid (truncated dodecahedron): 182 positions (60 vertices, 90 edges, 32 faces)
- Srid (small rhombicosidodecahedron): 242 positions (60 vertices, 120 edges, 62 faces)
- Snid (snub dodecahedron): 302 positions (60 vertices, 150 edges, 92 faces)
- Grid (great rhombicosidodecahedron): 362 positions (120 vertices, 180 edges, 62 faces)
Note that there are two other Platonic solids, the octahedron and the icosahedron. These were omitted, because they are equivalent in Ring Realms to their duals, the cube and dodecahedron.
Some of the boards are quite large, so depending on what resolution you are using, you sometimes may need to turn off one or more of the Toolbar, Status Bar, and Search Progress to see the whole board.
Acknowledgements
The graphics were rendered in the POV-Ray ray tracer, the boards by adapting Russell Towle's POV-Ray #include files for uniform polyhedra. The polyhedron nicknames are by Jonathan Bowers. |
