Pentagonia has roots in the ancient row games of Twelve Men's Morris, Nine Men's Morris, and Tic-Tac-Toe. While most people in today's North America are familiar with Tic-Tac-Toe, having learned the game as young children, each of these ancient games enjoyed recurrent periods of widespread popularity in ages past. Depending on the country you resided in, you could have known Nine Men's Morris by such names as:

• Mill or Nine Men's Morris - England,
• Morelles - France,
• Muhle - Germany,
• Linea - Italy, and
• Molenspel - Holland,

Though easier to learn than chess, none of these ancient games achieved a similar stature. The first move advantage that existed within them was substantially greater than the first move advantage that exists in chess. As a result they had much less game play.

The Pentagonia Rules of Play, and five-sided Pentagonia game board are innovations that minimize the first move advantage and put Pentagonia within that rare class of board games in which victory is a function of the reasoning processes, and never a function of luck.

What makes Pentagonia New and Unique?

• Four potential game phases create/enhance game play among players of differing levels of skill and experience and serves to create intergenerational game play. Besides the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, players can derive pleasure from smiting their opponent in the first or second phase, or by taking their opponent through all four game phases - depending of course, on whether they are the more or less experienced player.

• Rule modifications, and the four potential game phases, including our introduction of a jump phase when a losing player still has a realistic chance of winning, help offset the substantial first move advantage that existed in Pentagonia's ancestor games.

• Players must analyze constantly through-out the game:
  when determining which of their game buttons to move or place, and where; and, when the opportunity arises, which of their opponent's game pieces is best removed.

• Every movement or removal of a game button impacts on the game, so both players must fully immerse themselves in the game if they wish to win.

• Pentagonia is not a culturally specific game, or game in which membership in a race or culture creates advantages or disadvantages viz. persons from other races and cultures.

• Pentagonia is played on a five-sided playing surface that is printed on a square non-folding board.

• Players can learn the basics of the game in minutes. It is almost as easy to learn as Tic-Tac-Toe. On the other hand, it is not a simple game and will be a challenge to master.

• Games can be completed in under 20 minutes.

• Pentagonia teaches reasoning and pattern recognition skills, the relation between goal setting or planning and reward, and the benefits of anticipatory thinking.

• The mind to mind competition this new game fosters makes it very popular among late pre-teen and early teen boys.

• One of eight new games selected for inclusion in a Most Enjoyed Games list compiled by Game Review Students attending Rutgers University in December of 1999.

• Absorbing fun for pre-teen and early teen boys, university students and senior citizens alike.

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