Hex for iPad vs Root Down

Hex is a strategy board game played on a hexagonal grid, theoretically of any size and several possible shapes, but traditionally as an 11×11 rhombus. Other popular dimensions are 13×13 and 19×19 as a result of the game's relationship to the older game of Go. According to the book A Beautiful Mind, John Nash (one of the game's inventors) advocated 14×14 as the optimal size. History The game was invented by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein, who introduced it in 1942 at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was independently re-invented in 1947 by the mathematician John Nash at Princeton University. Hex is an abstract strategy game that belongs to the general category of "connection" games. Rules Each player has an allocated color, Red and Blue being conventional. Players take turns placing a stone of their color on a single cell within the overall playing board. The goal is to form a connected path of your stones linking the opposing sides of the board marked by your color, before your opponent connects his or her sides in a similar fashion. The first player to complete his or her connection wins the game. The four corner hexagons each belong to both adjacent sides. The turn of each player is shown by a red or blue disc on a side of the board game. The player must touch a cell to fill it with his own color. After that, he can cancel his last move using the 'Undo' button, and redo a different move. When the move is done, the turn comes of the opponent player. John Nash proved in 1952 that a game of Hex cannot end in a tie, and that for a symmetric board there exists a winning strategy for the player who makes the first move (by the strategy-stealing argument). However, the argument is non-constructive: it only shows the existence of a winning strategy, without describing it explicitly. Finding an explicit strategy has been the main subject of research since then.

Root Down is an original abstract strategy game designed by Martin Grider for 2-players. It's rules about which pieces you can move are a little quirky, but once you figure it out, it's very quick to play, and has some interesting gameplay mechanics. In Root Down, you have two types of pieces. There are "kicker" pieces that must be next to a "root" piece to move. (Root pieces cannot move.) Kickers can only move exactly as far as the number of kickers next to the root. After a kicker moves, it "kicks" all of the neighboring pieces, then settles down into a new "root" piece. If you kick one of your own root pieces, it becomes another "kicker"! Kicking an opponent's root does the same, and if you kick it again before it has a chance to move, you'll to capture it! The game features an AI player, as well as pass-and-play options. There are several variable setups to chose from. Each one plays slightly different. Please use the "send feedback" button to send me your input, or email me: rootdown@abstractpuzzle.com