Schlangennest /
Snake Nest

Translation by Stephen Tavener

Distributed from The Rules Bank by Mike Siggins

Preparation

Each player takes all the snake pieces of one colour (each tile has coloured and neutral snake bits on them). It will help if you sort your pieces into three piles: straight bits, curves, and head/tail.

Play is in a notional grid, the size to be determined before play begins:

2 players 3 players 4 players
Easy 6x6 7x7 8x8
Medium 5x7
5x9
6x8
6x10
7x9
Difficult 4x8 4x10 5x11

Game Play

On each turn, players extend their snake at either end by playing a straight or curved tile (NOTE: you must play so as to extend your snake with the coloured section of your tile - otherwise you would have two snakes - which is illegal). If you connect to any neutral sections, these become part of your snake.

It is illegal to play so as to join your snake to another player's snake, or so that three snakes enter the same tile space.

Back to the notional grid. The dimensions are fixed as soon as a snake reaches the limit in each direction. As soon as a snake hits the edge, you put a head or tail on it (not part of your turn). The head/tail tiles may be played outside the grid. Nothing else can.

(NOTE: the head/tail MAY be played like a normal tile.)

Play continues until no-one can move. At this point you count all the segments in your snake (including the head and tail). The longest snake is the winner.

Gobi Variant

This game is for 2-3 players, and is played in a fixed grid. The size of the grid, and number of pieces you'll be using is in the table below:

Players Grid Size Pieces per player
2 5x6 7 straight,
9 curves
3 6x6 6 straight,
8 curves

The unused pieces are turned face down, and used to define the boundary of the grid.

Players take turns to place pieces anywhere in the grid - there are no requirements for pieces to be adjacent.

If a player places a piece so as to join two snakes of different colours together, all segments of the smaller snake are removed from the board - even if they form part of another snake.

If two snakes are joined with grey sections between them, the grey sections are part of neither snake. The smallest snake is still destroyed.

If two snakes of equal length are joined, then the snakes remain until another tile is added to the end of either snake.

Removed tiles are returned to their owner.

Any player may pass on their turn.

The game ends when all players pass.

The player with the most sections in their snakes wins.

The Game Cabinet - editor@gamecabinet.com - Ken Tidwell