Kitty Cartel Rules and Game Play

Kitty Cartel is a fun incarnation of Geon Axis. It's premise is the same as Geon Axis- encircle territory, the more the better, with go rules of liberties and capturing stones applying. It's game boards are smaller, with each player given one 5x5 hexagon game tile - and one tile to start the game is placed on the table. At any stage a player can connect their hexgrid game tile to the original board, extending the size and shape of the board and offering the players more space. Placing a game tile is considered a move and so no stone may be placed by that player until the next round. Players don't have to play their game tile - choosing to do so is entirely up to them.

You always must nominate a 'common good cause' for each game - that's the reason for play. (raising money for a charity or pizza/beer fund are two clear examples)

You pay to play, with a 'buy in' system - each player pays the same amount of real money. The money is placed in the kitty and it up for grabs! So for example: 5 players with a $20 buy in means $100 can be won.

To solve the issue of 'who goes first' (there is a mathematical disadvantage to moving first) a honorable and charitable player will offer all other players a generous advantage by themselves moving first. This is a free choice and is a very honorable move. if no1 moves first then all money goes to the charity and the game is considered a great success.

Each player is given 10 'kitty' tokens at the start of the game - these tokens will be used to calculate your final winnings. You can think about each token as 10% of your winnings. At any time during the game you can put a token in the kitty as a charitable donation to the cause. If, by the end of the game, you are the winner - and you have 6 tokens left. that means that you keep 60% of the winnings, with the other 40% of money going to the common good.

Here's the gambling aspect of Kitty Cartel, it's very simple in practice but seems difficult to explain and understand.
You can swap a competitors stone on the board for your own stone - but you must challenge them to a little guessing game of  "who will donate more Kitty Tokens to the Charity" you secretly write down how many tokens you are willing to donate, and place it face down on the table. You both reveal your nominated amounts at the same time. Who ever has the highest number wins! The winner donates the nominated number of Kitty Tokens to the Charity (if the number was 2 or higher, 1 token is given to the loser) Then the winner captures (removes and keeps) the loosing stone as a prisoner and replaces that stone with their own.
If you both nominate the same amount, so - if it's a tie, no stones are changed on the board and the challenger (aggressor) donates the nominated number of Kitty Tokens to the Charity and gets to make another move. (they can challenge the same stone again if they like).

There is only one 'Fat Cat Kitty Cartel' winner - They win the portion of their winnings as per the number of Kitty Tokens they have left (up to 100%).

And that's it. All disputes are handles with grace or the game ends and all money goes to the charity.

There's a cute gangsta kitten narrative that makes the game appealing to a wide audience.

Geon Axis Game Board Iterations and Prototypes

Tessellating the Sphere into
hexagons (and 12 pentagons)

Finished Tessellation

Geon Axis was originally meant to be played on a sphere, (the term axis in the name refers to the axis on the globe) with the idea that there are no edges to the board. The Frequency of the iterations could be increased as needed to accommodate any number of players, but prototyping and playing on a physical sphere proved difficult as not all players could see the parts of the board that they wanted at the same time (this wouldn't be a problem as an app).

An old globe was chosen as the board prototype, originally i wanted to use magnets and a 3D printed steel sphere, but this was cost prohibitive and using whiteboard marker on worked fine as shown below.

Printed Geon Axis pre-cut

I then decided on the interlocking hexagon game board design where each player has their own game board that they can choose to play (or not) extending the current game by connecting to the current board.

Paper colour printed Geon Axis
with Interlocking Game Boards

I printed out pieces and board and manually cut them out (I later was informed that there are hexagon hole punches that would have saved me some blisters). The problem with the paper pieces was they were too light and difficult to remove from the board (being hexagons they would interlock moving other pieces all over the board).

3D Printed Geon Axis Hexagon Game Tiles

The latest iteration is a 3D printed Game Board with coloured beads that are played in the gaps the board holds the pieces in place. The tiles interlock perfectly.

Geon Axis Played with 3 Players

GeonAxis Rules

TL;DR: It's basically altruistic multiplayer go with the ability to gamble* if you want. Use your pieces to capture(circle) free space on the board,
More circled space = Good.
Note: GeonAxis is only cooperative and altruistic if you want! By all means if you can take on everyone without cooperating to win more money* then that's up to you.

More Details:

GeonAxis is an encircling game similar to Go. Go rules apply regarding liberties and capturing pieces etc (watch a how to play go video on YouTube, here's one:)

The Game Pot:

There is a game pot or ‘kitty’ similar to poker that is up for grabs, each player puts 10 Geon Credits into the pot at the start of play and holds 10 more Geon Credits to use during the game.

Game Play:

It is round based, rather than turn based with all players placing one piece each on the Game Board Tile (within the face of the hexagons rather than on the intersecting lines, so it's different to Go in this respect). Pieces are placed at the same time within a set period of time. You may place a piece anywhere on the board so long as there is a free space next to the piece (or the unit aka a group of same coloured pieces that are all connected --- just like in go). If you dont move within the set round time you lose that turn. Each player has the ability to pause the game up to a maximum amount of time decided upon by all players at the start of the game (default is five minutes, for toilet breaks etc).

(First in best dressed will solve most disputes, for more serious disputes all players who don't move somewhere else within the turn time period lose their turn and can't play in the disputed space next round either.)

Each player has one Game Board Tile that they may play as their turn (instead of playing a coloured piece) connecting to another Game Board Tile (within the black line guides on the table) to extend the play area of the game. It is not compulsory to play a Game Board Tile.

Co-operative Play and challengers:

GeonAxis Game Title

GeonAxis was named because of the pattern recognition aspects in Biederman's Recognition-by-components theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geon_(psychology)

Also the term geon (for geological eon) refers to large geologic time intervals. Geologists traditionally subdivide Earth history into a hierarchy of named intervals: eons, eras, periods, etc. (e.g. Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geon_%28geology%29

The last inspiration for the word Geon come from that in theoretical general relativity, a geon is an electromagnetic or gravitational wave which is held together in a confined region by the gravitational attraction of its own field energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geon_(physics)

The term axis refers to the fact that the game can be played on a hextiled sphere that would spin on its axis representing a world domination style game with a spherical game board. (all hexagon grid with the exception of 12 pentagons to allow spherical tiling).