Star (board game)

Two player abstract strategy board game
the board game Star

Star is a two player abstract strategy board game developed by Craige Schensted (now Ea Ea). It was first published in the September 1983 issue of Games magazine. It is a connection game similar to Hex, Y, Havannah, and TwixT. Unlike these games, however, the result is based on a player having a higher final score rather than achieving a specific goal. He has since developed a slightly more complicated version called *Star with better balance between edge and center moves, writing "*Star is what those other games wanted to be."

Star is played on a board of hexagonal cells. Although the board can have any size and shape, a board with unequal edges is generally used to avoid ties. Players may not place stones on the partial hexagon border cells off the edge of the board; these are used for scoring. One player places black stones on the board; the other player places white stones. The game begins with one player placing a stone on the board. To avoid giving an advantage to the first player, a pie rule is used, allowing the second player to switch sides at that point. Players then alternate turns, placing a stone on an empty cell on the board. Players may pass; the game is over when both players pass. This can be accomplished by modifying those corner cells to be five sided; the removal of the six small partial scoring cells at the corners means the resulting total score of both players is 25 on the 5×6 board. For the example game illustrated here, the revised score is White 11, Black 14 with the modified 2 point corners. Each player occupied three corner cells in this example, so the score is reduced by three points each using the modified board.

Schensted first developed Poly Y in the 1970s, a more generalized version of Y in that Y is the special case of Poly Y using a board with three sides and corners. Through experimentation, Schensted discovered that a board with nine sides and corners and seven elements per side was ideal; more corners would mean shorter sides, and players could make a "Y" touching three sides relatively easily. After R. Wayne Schmittberger contacted Schensted in the early 1980s, asking to publish Poly Y in Games magazine, Schensted dusted off the concept and playtested it with his wife, Irene. During one of their games, they decided to grant a bonus to the player who more effectively linked their groups together to avoid ties, resulting in the rules for Star.