''Uisge'' (pronounced: ''wisk'',
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
: for ''water''), also known as ''Skorpion'', is a
strategy board game created by and published in 1984 by
Hexagames in which two players attempt to be the first to flip all their playing stones on a rectangular grid.
Gameplay
''Uisge i''s a game played on a rectangular game board consisting of 42 squares. The game utilizes twelve round stone game pieces, divided equally between white and black, with each piece having one blank side and one side with a crown. At the beginning of the game, all stones are placed on the board with the blank side facing up. Similar to
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
,''the player controlling the white pieces takes the first turn, followed by the player controlling the black pieces.''
On a player's turn, a stone can be moved in one of two ways:
* Jump: A piece may jump over a neighbouring own or an opponent's piece in a horizontal or vertical direction, provided the landing space is empty. The jumping stone is flipped, making a blank stone a crown stone and a crown stone a blank stone.
* Move: Only crown pieces may move. It may be moved to an empty adjacent empty field in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction. The crown stone is not turned over.
A stone may only be moved if all stones on the field are still connected to each other in a horizontal or vertical direction. No stone or group of stones may stand alone and stones cannot move into a space that would leave them only diagonally connected to the chain.
The object of the game is to flip all ones stones to the crown side before the opponent.
Reception
''Uisge'' was featured as a "break-away game" in the 1983 magazine. It was awarded the 1984
Spiel de Jahres special award for "Beautiful Game".
References
{{reflist
Board games introduced in 1984
Board game award winners
Strategy games
German board games