How to play
Surge Stones is a game for two: Blue and Orange. You score only by shoving enemy stones off their own back edge. The app's 2-minute tutorial teaches all of this on a real board. Here it is on one page.
The board and the stones
The board is 8 by 8. The two rows nearest you are your home rows; the two nearest your opponent are theirs. The four rows between are the middle, and nobody may place there.
Each player has 20 stones: two of every value from 1 to 10. You keep a hand of 3, drawn at random from your own supply, and refill after every placement while your supply lasts.
Blue moves up the board, Orange moves down. Your back edge is the edge behind your home rows. That's the edge you're defending.
A round: place, reveal, surge
- Place. The first placer puts one stone from their hand face-down on any empty square in their home rows. Then the second placer does the same, seeing where the first stone went but not its value. If you have no stones in hand, or no empty home square, you skip.
- Reveal. Every face-down stone flips face-up and stays that way for the rest of the game.
- Surge. Every line of stones on the board moves one square at the same time, following the rules below.
Who places first swaps every round, so neither player gets the edge of always seeing the other's placement.
Lines and strength
A line is an unbroken run of one player's stones, next to each other in the same column. A single stone is a line of 1. Its front is the stone furthest forward.
A line's strength is the sum of its front four stones. Stones further back still move and can be pushed, but they add nothing.
When lines meet
In each column, a Blue line and the next Orange line ahead of it face each other. What happens depends on the gap between their fronts:
| Empty squares between fronts | One line is stronger | Equal strength |
|---|---|---|
| 2 or more | No contest: both move forward 1 | No contest: both move forward 1 |
| 1 | The stronger line takes the square; the weaker stays put | Clash: both front stones are removed; nothing moves |
| 0 (touching) | Push: the stronger line moves forward 1 and the whole weaker line moves back 1 | Clash: both front stones are removed; nothing moves |
- Blocked push. If the square right behind the losing line is taken by one of the pusher's stones, the push fails and neither line moves.
- Lines with no one in front (or with 2 or more empty squares to the enemy) simply move forward 1. A line stays put if the square ahead is still occupied after the meetings are settled, for example by a stone that was just pushed back there.
- The far edge. If your line's front stone is already on the last row, it leaves the board and scores nothing. The rest of the line moves up.
Every meeting is settled first, then every free line moves. Because it all happens at once, the order of columns never matters.
Scoring
There's exactly one way to score: push an enemy stone off its own back edge. You score that stone's value.
| What happens | Points |
|---|---|
| You push an enemy stone off its own back edge | Its value, to you |
| Your stone rolls off the far edge | 0, and the stone is gone |
| Clash | 0, and both front stones are gone |
End of the game
The game ends when both players' hands and supplies are empty and the board is clear, usually after about 27 rounds. The higher score wins; equal scores are a draw. If a surge moves nothing while both supplies are empty, the game ends there.
What you can see
Your hand and supply are hidden from your opponent, and theirs from you. Every revealed or removed stone is public, so you can work out which of your opponent's stones are still unseen. The app's tracker along the top of the game screen keeps count for you.
A few tips
These come from watching the bots play thousands of games. People may find other ways to win.
- Don't hoard your 9s and 10s. Big stones placed early start pushing sooner and hold their column for the whole game.
- Fight only fights you can win, and win them big. A narrow edge invites a reinforcement that turns it into a loss or a clash.
- Place on the front home row. Stones next to the middle reach the fight a round sooner.
- Concentrate. Stack stones into a few columns instead of spreading thin.
- Feed when you place first, answer when you place second. Placing first, back up your own lines. Placing second, you've seen where they went, so respond.