Playing the game
The players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the starting player. On his turn, a player must first move Alexander and then takes 2 further actions.
The move of Alexander is the basis for a player’s success or failure in this game. Thus, it is critical that the players understand fully all the possibilities of Alexander’s move.
1. Moving Alexander
On a player’s turn, he first chooses 1 of the 2
-closest: the shortest distance between the point of the triangle where Alexander now stands to the closest point of the triangular space where Alexander could be moved.
-empty: a space is empty when it has no boundary walls on any of its sides and no figure (guards or Alexander) standing in it. A point of an empty space can be touching a boundary wall.
When moving Alexander, a player tries to reach different goals considering the situation at that very moment; many times he simply moves Alexandros in the direction he prefers, but sometimes he encloses a productive province that he can occupy (now or later) or he reduces the size of an opponent’s province.
Figure 1: Alexander stands on the starting space and the 2 face-up cards show a
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| horse and a lyre. Thus, the player can move |
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| Alexander to the closest empty space |
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| showing a lyre or a horse. The |
| 1 | 2 | spaces are the 2 spaces where the player may |
| move Alexander, depending on which card he | ||
1 | 2 |
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| chooses. The player may not (if the player | ||
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| chose the horse card) move |
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| Alexander to the lower right horse |
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| 3 | space as it is further (3 triangle |
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| sides vs. 2 triangle sides) from | |
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| 3 |
| Alexander’s current position. |
The player adds the chosen card to his hand and draws another card from the supply as the new
empty spaces showing the symbol
matching that of the card chosen that are the same distance from Alexander, the player may choose which among them to move
Alexander to. Then the player moves Alexander to any one of the three points of the triangular space he chose. The player need not choose a point closest to Alexander, but may choose any of the three points of the chosen triangle.
Next, the player places black boundary walls on the triangle sides between Alexander’s previous position and his new position. The shortest path must be followed. If there are several shortest paths, the player may choose freely among them.
Figure 2: the player chose the lyre card, added it to his hand, and drew a soldier card to replace it. Then, he must move Alexander to any point of the empty lyre space shown. Let’s say he chooses the eastern-most point in that space; next he places 2 boundary walls between Alexander’s previous position and his new one: it’s the only way to do that, because any other path would require 3 steps instead of 2.
Figure 3: the situation is the same as in the previous example, but the player moves Alexander to the southern-most point
in that space. Next, he places 3 black boundary walls between Alexander’s
previous position and his new one. Note, that in this
case a small province has been formed with 4 spaces, 2 with and 2 without symbols. This is not the only shortest way to make the connection. It is also possible, for example, to follow the coastline.
Provided the shortest path rule is respected, a player may choose any kind of path. For example, a path along the coast (or the edge of the playing area where there is no coast) or a
path that already includes boundary walls. If he does, he
places boundary walls also along the edges, but he does not place a second boundary wall in a space where one already exists.
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