Meridians

About this board game

Meridians is an abstract strategy game for two players that takes about 40 minutes to play. Set on a centerless hexagonal board tessellated with triangles, it combines territorial positioning with a clear objective: annihilate your opponent’s stones.

The game is named after the meridian system. Players use stones of two colors, with Light moving first. During the opening, each player places a first stone anywhere, then places a second stone so that their two stones have a path between them.

A path is an empty point, or an uninterrupted straight line of empty points, with like-colored stones at both ends. Those stones must not belong to the same group. A group consists of like-colored stones adjacent to one another, while a group is considered dead when none of its stones has a path.

• Remove all opposing dead groups at the start of your turn.
• Place a stone on an empty point aligned with an existing friendly stone, provided no opposing stone lies between them.
• Passes are not allowed.

After the opening turns, survival becomes the central concern. At the beginning of a turn, a player with no stones of their color remaining loses, making every placement and every threatened group matter.

The board can be any size; the regular board has 6 points on two sides and 7 points on four sides. An optional pie rule can reduce the first-player advantage: the first player places one stone of each color, and the second player chooses which color to play. Meridians won Best Combinatorial 2-Player Game of 2021 in the BGG Abstract Games forum.