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Paletto

An easy and fun game for 2 or 3 players by Dieter Stein.

Material

• Gameboard with 36 spaces
• 36 colored pieces (6 colors, 6 pieces each)

Preparation

Fig. 1 – All 36 playing pieces are placed on the gameboard such that same-colored pieces do not touch horizontally or vertically.

Aim of the Game

The game is won by the player who either takes all 6 pieces of any color or whoever takes the last piece from the board.

How to Play

Players take turns. In each turn a player chooses a color, then removes any number of same-colored pieces (not necessarily all) from the board and puts them in front of him.

A piece may be removed from the board if

• there are no adjacent pieces on two sides (at start only the corner pieces may be taken – see Fig. 2),
• and all remaining pieces are still connected horizontally and vertically after the move (Fig. 3).

Fig. 2 – This is the starting position. The first player may take one or both black pieces, or the yellow one, or the white one. All other pieces have only one free side or they are surrounded completely, and are therefore unreachable.

Fig. 3 – All marked pieces are reachable. The blue piece in the middle of the board may not be taken (although it has 2 free sides), because it connects all other pieces.

Example

Fig. 4 – The player on the right wants to take black pieces. Only two of them are safe to be taken. The one marked with a red X would release the last green piece such that the left player could win with green in the next turn.