# Capture: surround it, outweigh it, or step down onto it.

> Hexodic has three kinds of capture, and every one of them is decided by height.

How Hexodic stones are captured: encirclement weighed by tiers and board edge, the Echo-Capture group check, and a Move onto a lower enemy cell. Tier-0 immunity and the capture cooldown explained.

Canonical HTML: https://hexodic.com/rules/capture
Site index for agents: https://hexodic.com/llms.txt

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](/rules/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](/rules/project) 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](/rules/tiers) — why height decides captures.
- [Takeover](/rules/takeover) — the win that counts captures.
- [Glossary: Capture and Encirclement](/glossary#capture)
- [All rules](/rules)

[Get the Hexodic app](/download) and raise a cell before you surround it.

## Where to go next

- [Takeover](https://hexodic.com/rules/takeover) — Winning by captures alone.
- [Strategy](https://hexodic.com/strategy) — The principles that follow from the rules, not from habit.
- [How it works](https://hexodic.com/how-it-works) — The whole turn, in plain language.

## Questions this page answers

- How do you capture in Hexodic?
- Why can't I capture a stone on tier 0 in Hexodic?