Lines of Action

Overview

Lines of Action is an abstract strategy game with one goal: connect all of your remaining pieces into a single group. Not capture the most, not hold the most ground — just bring your army together.

Your twelve pieces start scattered around the edge of an 8×8 board, and the movement rule is what makes gathering them hard. A piece moves exactly as many squares as there are pieces on the line it is travelling along — both colours, counting itself.

So the board decides how far everything can move, and every move changes it. Shift one piece and you have altered the distances available to several others. Capture one and you have altered them more.

The sharp edge is that the winning condition belongs to both players. You cannot simply perfect your own formation, because the moment your opponent connects theirs, the game is over.

The starting position

One side takes the top and bottom rows, six pieces on each, leaving the corners empty. The other takes the left and right columns, six on each, corners again empty.

Twelve pieces apiece, arranged as far apart as the board allows. Everything from there is the work of pulling them together.

The movement rule

Choose a direction, count every piece of either colour on that entire line including the one you are moving, and move exactly that many squares.

Six pieces on a row means a piece moving along that row travels exactly six squares. Not up to six — exactly six. The same applies vertically and along both diagonals.

Because the count includes your opponent’s pieces, they are steering your movement as much as you are. A line they crowd becomes a line you travel further along, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes exactly the problem.

Jumping, blocking and capturing

• You may jump over your own pieces freely.
• You may not pass over an opponent’s piece — one anywhere along the path blocks the move.
• You may not land on your own piece.
• You may land on an opponent’s piece, which captures it.

So your own pieces are stepping stones and the opponent’s are walls — except at the very end of the path, where a wall becomes a target.

That asymmetry rewards clustering. A tight formation of your own pieces does not obstruct you; it gives you routes through.

Why capturing can lose you the game

Capturing removes an obstacle and changes the line counts. It is often good. It is also the most dangerous move in the game, for a reason unique to Lines of Action.

The win condition is about the pieces a player has left. Take an opponent’s outlying piece — the one stranded away from their main group — and the pieces that remain may now form a single connected group. You will have won the game for them.

Material advantage and winning are not the same thing here. Before any capture, check what their position looks like without the piece you are about to take.

The connection goal

Two pieces are connected if they touch in any of the eight directions — diagonal contact counts exactly as much as side by side.

The group needs no particular shape. What matters is that you can trace a path from every remaining piece to every other through touching pieces. The instant that is true, you win. There is no confirming move and no requirement to capture anything.

Strategy and tips

• Count the line every time. Distances are never fixed. The move a piece had last turn may not exist this turn.
• Watch your worst piece. Eleven connected pieces and one stranded is a loss. Work on the hardest one, not the easy ones.
• Cluster deliberately. A tight group is both closer to winning and easier to move through, since your own pieces never block you.
• Treat captures as positional moves. Ask what the line counts become afterwards — and whether you have just joined their army up for them.
• Check their group before every move. Improving your own position is irrelevant if they connect next turn.
• Use their crowding. Enemy pieces lengthen your moves along the lines they occupy. Sometimes the fastest route home runs through their formation.

Three levels of computer opponent

The difficulty settings change how deeply the engine searches:

• Vs AI — Easy searches two moves ahead.
• Vs AI — Medium searches three.
• Vs AI — Hard searches five, and will spot a connection you have left one move away.

Even Easy looks two moves deep here, which is worth knowing: unlike some abstracts, there is no level that simply takes the nearest capture. Every setting is thinking about the connection.

Pass & Play

Local Pass & Play hands one device between two people. It is the best way to learn, because counting lines aloud is much easier than doing it under time pressure — and because watching someone else win by capturing the wrong piece teaches the lesson permanently.

Online multiplayer against a remote opponent is available in the Android and iOS apps. The browser version plays against the computer or a friend beside you.

Controls

• Tap a piece to see its legal moves, then tap a highlighted square to move or capture.
• Choose the AI level or Pass & Play from the menu, and restart at any time.

Lines of Action is quick to describe and slow to master. The trick is to stop thinking of pieces as having fixed movement. Every position generates its own distances — count the line, watch both connections, and remember that one careless capture can hand over the game.

If you liked Lines of Action

Konane is the other capture-driven abstract here, and it inverts the ending: you lose when you run out of legal moves rather than when your opponent assembles something.

Checkers shares the jumping captures but makes them compulsory, and Nine Men’s Morris is about forming lines of three rather than one connected mass.