Abstract strategy games — the genre, the hex-grid branch, and hexodic

What is an abstract strategy game?

An abstract strategy game is a game of perfect information and no luck: both players see the whole position, nothing is hidden, and no dice, cards, or randomness decide outcomes. Chess, Go, Hive, and Tak are the canon. Wins come entirely from decisions — which is why the genre’s players care so much about elegance, balance, and depth-per-rule.

This page is the hub for the genre as hexodic sees it. From here: how hexodic compares to the classics · hexodic vs Hive, head to head · why hex grids change everything · the full hexodic rules.

What is hexodic, for someone who already loves abstracts?

A perfect-information, zero-luck abstract on a radius-3 hexagonal board (37 cells), with a single piece type whose identity comes from board position and development rather than from a menagerie of movement rules. If your shelf has Hive, Tak, or Onitama on it, hexodic was built to sit in that company — and it lives on your phone, in games of about five to six minutes. For a piece-by-piece comparison, see games like hexodic.

The four tests a great abstract has to pass

The genre has a century of failure modes, and any new abstract should say out loud how it handles them:

Draw death. As play strengthens, do games collapse into draws? hexodic’s measured draw rate across large-scale simulation is 0.25% — three simultaneous win conditions mean stalling one threat concedes tempo to another.
First-move advantage. Does the opening move decide the game? hexodic’s measured first-player win rate is 46.38% — no meaningful edge, and what edge exists runs against the first player.
Memorization creep. Does mastery become homework? hexodic has no opening theory to study — depth comes from reading the live board, not from a book. The board is small (37 cells), but measured branching is 911 / 1,009 / 665 at half-moves 5 / 10 / 20, so rote lines die fast.
Depth-per-rule. Is complexity earned? One piece type, three sub-actions per turn, three win conditions. The ruleset went through nine iterations of adversarial design, simulation, and critique before shipping — the failure modes above were engineered out and measured out, not hand-waved.

The mechanics, honestly

A turn is three sub-actions in sequence: Project (place from reserve — or, once your reserve is empty, move a stone, capturing by displacement from higher ground), Shape (raise or lower one cell’s tier — the board itself is the terrain you develop), and optionally Echo — spending one of your three per-game charges to flag an extra capture check or permanently lock a tier-2 cell. Capture is by encirclement: ring a stone so the surrounding tiers outweigh its own and it returns to reserve. One piece type, but height lives in the cells — so every stone is exactly as strong as the ground you’ve shaped under it.

Three ways to win: Network (connect five of your tier-2 stones), Takeover (capture six of your opponent’s stones), or Strangle (leave your opponent with no legal move). Three win conditions on 37 cells means every game is a negotiation between racing your own structure and dismantling theirs.

Why a hex grid?

Six neighbors instead of four changes the geometry of threats: connection is easier to build and harder to block, encirclement becomes a real tactic instead of a corner case, and there are no diagonal ambiguities to patch with special rules. That’s why connection games and modern abstracts keep returning to hexes — the longer story, with the games that prove it, is on hex-grid strategy games.

Made with respect for the genre

The ruleset is deterministic end to end — the abstract-strategy definition this genre actually honors. There’s no randomness where randomness doesn’t belong: none. And one thing no classic on the shelf does: hexodic’s bots get stronger from real human play, through a transparent, statistical promotion system — that story is on play-to-train, and the exact promotion mechanics are on the bot gauntlet.