One board. One piece. Three ways to win.

How do you play hexodic?

Two players alternate turns on a 37-cell hexagonal board (radius 3). A turn is a short sequence of three sub-actions, in order: Project (place or move a stone), then Shape (raise or lower a cell’s tier), then optionally an Echo (spend one of your three charges). First to complete any one of three win conditions takes the game. That’s the whole skeleton — everything else is consequences.

The pieces: stones and tiers

There is one kind of piece: the stone — no rank, no orientation, nothing hidden. Height lives in the board instead: every cell has a tier (0, 1, or 2), and a stone is exactly as strong as the ground it stands on. Tier-2 cells are the high ground: harder to capture on, and the building blocks of the Network win. A stone’s strength is where it stands and what stands with it, not what it’s named.

The turn: Project, then Shape, then Echo

• Project — place a stone from your reserve onto an empty cell (mandatory while you have reserve). Once your reserve is empty, you move a stone instead — and moving onto an adjacent enemy stone from higher ground captures it.
• Shape — raise or lower one cell’s tier by one step (0↔1↔2). You’re not just placing pieces; you’re terraforming the board they fight on.
• Echo — the scarce resource, and optional. You get three charges for the whole game. An Echo either flags one extra capture check this turn, or permanently locks one of your tier-2 cells (once per game). Charges never come back — when to spend them is the mid-game.

Capture: encirclement and high ground

Stones are captured two ways. By encirclement: ring an enemy stone (the board edge can help) so the surrounding tiers outweigh its own, and it returns to its owner’s reserve. Or by displacement: move onto an adjacent enemy stone from a higher-tier cell, and you take its place. Either way, height decides — control the tiers and you control the captures.

The three win conditions

1. Network — connect five of your tier-2 stones into one linked group. The builder’s win.
2. Takeover — capture six of your opponent’s stones. The aggressor’s win.
3. Strangle — leave your opponent with no legal move. The python’s win.

Three simultaneous threats on 37 cells is the engine of the game: defending against one usually means conceding tempo toward another.

The measured numbers

These come from the game’s own simulator, run at scale during the nine-iteration design process. The ruleset is maintained as one canonical document with CI checks that fail if any client drifts from it — the game you learn here is the game everyone plays.