HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

Pentagonia is a new two-player, abstract-strategy, board game that is available for sale through this website, and a growing number of toy and game catalogs and gift and game stores. This new game takes its name from:

• the shape of the playing board - a pentagon;
• the playing surface of the board, in which pentagons are prominent;
• the manner in which the game is played - the number five having some significance; and
• in recognition of the fact that the world's largest and most effective military is headquartered in a pentagon-shaped building, known as "The Pentagon." Coincidence? Perhaps...

PENTAGONIA, a new game for the new millennium and beyond, also has its roots. These roots lie in several ancient row games, each of which enjoyed recurrent periods of widespread popularity in ages past:

• Tic-Tac-Toe, which is probably the most widely played children's game in the world today. Also known by the names of Naughts and Crosses, and Three Men's Morris, most North Americans are familiar with this game having played it as young children.
• Nine Men's Morris, and
• Twelve Men's Morris.

Nine Men's Morris is one of the world's oldest games. It has been around for at least 3500 years. There is evidence it was played in ancient Egypt, Bronze-Age Ireland, Troy, Viking Norway and by members of the Zuni, Tewa, Tigua and Kere Amerindian tribes of the south-western United States, which suggests ancient origins indeed, or that there was more ancient inter-continental trade than previously imagined. Interestingly, this game is also referred to in the Talmud.

Depending on location, Nine Men's Morris came to be known by a number of alternate names:

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

Twelve Men's Morris, a successor game to Nine Men's Morris, came to be popular among the courts of medieval Europe.

While each of these games enjoyed recurrent periods of widespread popularity in ages past, those who are familiar with Tic-tac-toe, Nine Men's Morris or Twelve Men's Morris knows that in these strategy games the player who makes the first move has a decided advantage. This has been corrected in Pentagonia by:

• the alteration of the playing board, and,
• substantial rule modifications.

In Pentagonia, it really doesn't matter whether you are the first or second player to place a game piece on the board. You'll win if your strategy is superior, you think more moves ahead and you have fewer play errors. In this respect, Pentagonia is chess-like. On the other hand, this new game is a lot easier to learn than chess, since the game pieces are identical and do not have specific movements to learn that correspond with the identity of the piece. eg. Knight, King, Queen, or Pawn.

In Pentagonia, the value of a piece lies not in its identity, but in the position of the piece on the game board. Game play consists of evaluating where a piece is best placed or moved to, and if and when the opportunity arises, which of the opponent's game pieces is best removed...

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