GIPF is an abstract strategy board game by Kris Burm, the first of seven games in his series of games called the GIPF Project. GIPF was recommended by Spiel des Jahres in 1998.

Rules

The game board has a hexagonal shape with 4 intersection points per side and 37 intersections altogether, connected by a triangular grid. The playing area is surrounded by an array of 24 dots that are used to introduce pieces into play. To start, players deploy three pieces each, alternating colors, at the corners of the playing area, and turn the board so that a corner with the player's color is closest to them. In the starting position shown here, the White player is seated at the bottom of the board while the Black player is at the top. White takes the first turn. There are 18 pieces of each color; the basic game uses 15 (or more) while the standard and tournament games use all 18 for each player.

Placing and pushing

In each turn, players introduce a piece onto the board from one of the surrounding dots, then push the new piece into the playing area along a line connected to the dot. When a piece is pushed onto the playing area, any pieces ahead of it are pushed ahead along the same line as well. There are several restrictions on this movement:

Basic 4-in-a-row mechanic

In the most basic form of the game, each player has a reserve inventory of 12 pieces in addition to the 3 on the board for the starting position. To extend the length of the game, each player could add one, two, or three extra pieces to their reserves; alternatively, as a handicap, the less-experienced player could be given up to three extra pieces in their reserve. Forming a continuous line of four pieces in the player's color results in three actions: Once one player runs out of pieces in their reserve, the other player is the winner.

Standard game

The standard game follows the basic rules but includes GIPF pieces, which are each two stacked pieces. The starting position is the same, but all six pieces on the board to start are double-stacked GIPF pieces. Each player still starts with 18 basic (single) pieces, but the revised starting position with six GIPF pieces means each player's reserves start with 12 basic pieces. The basic pushing and 4-in-a-row mechanics remain the same, with the following exceptions: As in the basic game, exhausting the opponent's reserves is one winning condition. The other is eliminating all of the opponent's GIPF pieces.

Tournaments

As a suggestion, in tournament play, the following modified rules can be used:

Gameplay and strategy

Players take turns pushing tokens (one player taking black, the other white) from the edge of the tri-gridded, hexagonal board, with pieces already in play pushed in front of the new placements rather than allowing more than one piece on any space. The game is lost if a player has no more tokens to play, and since each starts with a set number of tokens, it is clearly necessary to recycle pieces already positioned to keep playing. This is achieved by contriving to line up four pieces of the same colour in a row on the board, at which point those tokens are returned to their owner, and any opposing tokens extending from the line of four are captured. Because a single player will often move several pieces and change numerous on-board relationships, it is remarkably difficult to predict the state of the board more than one turn ahead, despite GIPF being a game of perfect information. Play tends to be highly fluid and there is no real concept of long term territorial or spatial development. The game can be expanded with extra pieces (available separately) called Potentials, which allow different kinds of moves to be made. These are named for the other games in the GIPF Project, though the other games are not actually necessary in order to utilise the Potentials named after them.