Kensington (game)

Kensington is a board game devised by Brian Taylor and Peter Forbes in 1979, named after an affluent borough of London. It is played on a geometrical board based on the small rhombitrihexagonal tiling, as shown below.

The two players, red and blue, alternately place pieces on the intersections of the board until each has placed fifteen. Thereafter they alternate turns sliding a single piece along a line to an adjacent vertex. The object is to place pieces on the six vertices of a white hexagon or a hexagon of one's own color.

If a player forms a triangle, he is entitled to relocate one enemy piece. If a player forms a square, he may relocate two enemy pieces. Forming a triangle and a square simultaneously allows one to relocate only two enemy pieces.

The rules are simple and the board is attractive, but the game is not very deep. Whoever makes the first triangle or square is almost assured of being able to scatter the opposing pieces and win without difficulty. What depth the game does contain revolves around being first to begin scattering. The placing and movement of pieces is reminiscent of Nine Men's Morris.

In a business venture parallel to Trivial Pursuit in Canada, the British devisors set up their own company to make and publish the game. This attracted a fair amount of press attention at the time and Kensington picked up a UK Game of the Year award, although ultimately the buzz was short-lived and the game is now out of print.

Christian Freeling has invented a game called Lotus which uses the same board as Kensington.

External links

* http://www.tragsnart.co.uk/kenshub/kensington/kensington.htm
* [http://www.mindsports.net/CompleteGames/Territory/Lotus.html Lotus] rules at mindsports.net