A capture in Hexodic removes an enemy stone from the board and returns it to its owner’s reserve. Hexodic has three kinds of capture — encirclement, Echo-Capture and Move capture — and every capture counts toward the Takeover win.
Reviewed 2026-09-15 against the Hexodic rules engine.
Encirclement
At the end of every turn, the engine checks each enemy stone of the player who is not moving. An enemy stone is encircled and captured when:
- every one of its six neighbouring slots is either one of your stones or off the board (an empty cell or another enemy stone saves it);
- it stands on tier 1 or 2 — a stone on tier 0 can never be encircled;
- the tiers of your neighbouring stones, plus its own tier + 1 for every off-board slot, add up to more than six times its tier.
The weighing means height matters on both sides. A stone on a tier-1 cell in the middle of the board needs at least one of the surrounding stones to stand higher than tier 1; the same stone against the board edge is easier to take, because each edge slot counts as tier + 1. A stone on a tier-2 cell away from the board edge cannot be encircled by the normal check at all: the most six neighbours can total is exactly six times two, and the test needs more. Only board edge — or, for an Echo-Capture, enemy neighbours counting as walls — can tip it. All stones that meet the test are captured at once.
Echo-Capture
An Echo-Capture spends a charge to run a second check in which enemy neighbours count like board edge, so a sealed enemy group can be captured together.
Move capture
With an empty reserve, a stone may Move onto an adjacent enemy stone standing on a strictly lower tier, capturing it.
After a capture
A captured stone returns to its owner’s reserve, so its owner must Place again before they can Move. The capture cooldown then requires that player’s next Place to be at least 2 steps from every cell where their stones were captured.
Related
- Tiers — why height decides captures.
- Takeover — the win that counts captures.
- Glossary: Capture and Encirclement
- All rules
Get the Hexodic app and raise a cell before you surround it.