Trichet Cameron Browne (2008)

Trichet is a tile placement game of territory closure for two players.

Rules

Tiles: Two players, White and Blue, share a common pool of 96 triangular Trichet tiles. Each side of each tile is split into two coloured regions by a circular arc centred on one corner. Figure 1 shows the six valid rotations of the front and back of a Trichet tile.

Figure 1.  Six rotations front and back.

Start: White starts by placing two tiles in the centre of the playign area as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.  Starting position.

Play: Players then take turns adding a tile of their choice to touch at least one edge or corner of an existing tile, such that all neighbouring regions match in colour.

Auto Moves: Each move may result in one or more positions at which only one tile in one rotation may be placed such that colours match; all such positions are automatically made as part of the the move. Each auto move may result in additional auto moves, hence each player move will usually result in multiple tile placements.

Figure 3.  Tile a causes three auto moves.

For example, the Blue tile placement a shown in Figure 3 (left) creates two positions p and q that allow only one one valid placement each (a' and a'' respectively) which are automatically placed (centre). Note that a' creates a further position r that allows only one valid placement (a''') which is also automatically made to complete the move (right).

Aim: A player wins by completing a region of their colour more complex than a circle. For example, Blue wins the game shown in Figure 3 with a closed region that visits 14 tiles.

Figure 4.  A game won by Blue.

If a move surrounds regions of both colours then the mover loses. If the tiles run out before either player encloses a region then the game is tied.

The name Trichet refers to the game's origin as a form of triangular Truchet-like tiling.

The fact that each tile placement is automatically matched with the reflected tile along it's single-colour side means that each move is equivalent to playing tile pairs that constitute square Truchet tiles deformed to 60/120 rhombuses.

Trichet can be played on Richard's PBeM server, please check out the help file for more details and challenge me (camb) to a game any time.

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Site designed by Cameron Browne © 2007. Last modified 18/7/2007.