Mū Tōrere — the Māori star game
Eight points round a star and one in the middle. Each player has four pieces and there is only ever one empty point. The game is about not getting stuck.
From Mū Tōrere, a game of the Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand.
What it shows a designer
A board with a single empty point makes every move a question of who gets stuck. It shows how one restriction, the centre rule, can keep a tiny game from being won at once.
Credits
- Made by
- Traditional Māori game
- Sources
- nrich.maths.org/games/mu-torere
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_torere
What you need
- paper with an eight-pointed star and its centre drawn
- 4 coins of one kind and 4 of another
How to play
- The board. Draw eight points in a ring and one in the centre. Join each point to its two neighbours and to the centre.
- Set up. Put one player's four pieces on four points next to each other, and the other's on the other four. The centre is empty.
- A move. Take turns moving one of your pieces along a line into the empty point. No jumping and no capturing.
- The centre. A piece may move into the centre only if it sits next to an opponent's piece on the ring.
- Win. You win when your opponent cannot move. If the same position comes three times, call it a draw.
After playing, talk about
- Why does the centre rule exist? What happens without it?
- How quickly can a game be lost?
- What does a board with only one empty space do to play?
Its blocks
How its blocks were checked against BoardGameGeek
- Mu Torere: partly checkable, nothing against it. direct confrontation: not checkable. mostly skill: not checkable. full information: not checkable. abstract: not checkable. take turns: not checkable.
In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.