''Uisge'' (pronounced: ''wisk'',

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

: for ''water''), also known as ''Skorpion'', is a

strategy board game A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' coercion, uncoerced, and often autonomous, decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome. Almost all strategy games require internal decision tree-sty ...

created by and published in 1984 by

Hexagames Hexagames was a German game publisher in Dreieich, which existed from 1982 to 1992. It was one of the most famous German game publishers of the 1980s, notable for publishing games such as '' Lines of Action'' (1988) and ''Cosmic Encounter'' (199 ...

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. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

,''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 one 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