# Hexodic rules tools: ask the rules engine directly.

> Three small utilities that answer rules questions by calling the same engine the game uses — not a summary of it.

Free Hexodic rules tools that run the game's own rules engine on this page: explore board coordinates, check whether a turn is legal, and count the legal turns in a position.

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

## What are the Hexodic rules tools?

The Hexodic rules tools are three free browser utilities that answer rules questions by running Hexodic's canonical rules engine — the same TypeScript rules code the game server uses — directly on this page. None of the tools contains its own copy of the rules, so an answer from a tool is what the game itself would decide.

- **[Board coordinate explorer](/board-coordinate-explorer)** — Hexodic's board coordinate explorer names every cell with its axial coordinates, its ring distance from the centre, and its neighbours.
- **[Move-legality checker](/move-legality-checker)** — Hexodic's move-legality checker says whether a complete turn (Project, Shape, Echo) is legal in a position, step by step, and what happens if it is played.
- **[Branching-factor explorer](/branching-factor-explorer)** — Hexodic's branching-factor explorer counts the legal complete turns in one position you choose.

## Definitions used by all three tools

- **Axial coordinates (q, r)** — a two-number address for a hexagonal cell. The centre cell is (0, 0); a third "cube" value s = −q − r is sometimes shown for convenience.
- **Replay code** — a list of numbers separated by dots. Starting from the opening position, each number picks one turn from the engine's own ordered list of legal turns. A replay code is how the checker and the explorer describe a position, so a position can be shared as a link.
- **Complete turn** — one Project, then one Shape, then one Echo choice, which is how every Hexodic turn is built ([the rules](/how-it-works)).

## What the tools cannot tell you

The Hexodic rules tools do not evaluate positions, suggest good moves, or predict who is winning; they only report what the rules allow and what the rules say happens. The tools never run games on their own: every computation is for one position that you picked. A tool also cannot detect a repetition loss, because that rule depends on the full history of a real game rather than on a single position.

To play rather than analyse, [get the Hexodic app](/download). For the design reasons behind the board, see [hex-grid strategy games](/hex-grid-strategy-games).

*Reviewed 2026-09-15.*

## Where to go next

- [Strategy](https://hexodic.com/strategy) — The principles that follow from the rules, not from habit.
- [Common questions](https://hexodic.com/faq) — Availability, price, rules and data, answered plainly.
- [AI and research hub](https://hexodic.com/hexodic-and-ai) — The bots, the training loop and the measurements, collected.

## Questions this page answers

- Is there a Hexodic rules checker?
- How can I check if a Hexodic move is legal?