Quoridor

Quoridor is an elegant abstract strategy game by Gigamic. The premise of the game is simple: try to move your single pawn to reach the opposite side of the square board. (Think of it like how a pawn in Chess gets rewarded for doing that.)

Again, like Chess, Quoridor has a large square board, and it’s comprised of individual squares. There’s a big difference at play here, though. In Quoridor, you have access to wooden ‘walls’. You can try to place them down to create dead-ends to block your opponent’s progress! The problem is, of course, is that they’re trying to do the same thing to you…

Quoridor has a wonderful tactile nature to it. The board has grooves running between each square within the grid, up, down, left, right. On your turn you can either move your pawn into one adjacent square (not diagonal). Or, you can place a wall, which sits within a groove of your choice. The walls are two square’s length, and you can place them anywhere you like. You can sit it at right angles to another, creating corners. You can place one parallel to another, creating a ‘corridor’. (See what they did, there?)

The one rule is that you cannot fence your opponent’s pawn in with no possible exit. The dream placement is to block your opponent in such a way that they have one sole path to freedom. And that route is the longest route possible, like a rat in a maze!

Quoridor works as a superb two-player game, in a true abstract battle. However, if you want to create a real sense of chaos, you could try playing it with four-players!