Brax (game)
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 Board for Brax, without pieces. The diamonds in rows 1 and 9 mark the starting positions for each player. | |
| Designers | Frederic B. Denham |
|---|---|
| Publication | 1889 |
| Genres | abstract strategy |
| Players | 2-4 |
| Chance | none |
Brax is a two-player abstract strategy board game. It was invented in 1889 (or shortly before) in America by Frederic B. Denham of New York City.[1] The board design is unique. The players move their pieces along paths on the square board; each path is one of two colors. A piece can move one or two spaces in a turn depending upon whether it matches the color of the path. Players attempt to capture each other's pieces.
Brax was featured in The Book of Classic Board Games, written by Sid Sackson and published by Klutz Press in 1991,[2] which ranked it among the top 15 board games in history.
The game is also known as Jinx. A unique feature in Brax and Jinx is that players can call out "Brax" or "Jinx" if their piece threatens the other player's piece(s). This forces the other player to move the threatened piece on their next move (no other piece may be moved), and the threatened piece is jinxed; hence the name of the game Jinx.
There are three-player, four-player, and "fox and geese" (hunt game) versions of Brax.
A player wins when they have captured all their opponent's pieces.
Equipment
The board is composed of 64 square cells, laid out in eight rows and columns. The board is further designed with lines marked along the borders between cells in one of two colors (e.g. blue and red). Each square cell has three sides in one color and one side in the second color.[1]
Equivalently, the board can be considered as a square grid of 9×9 lines, with two, three, or four lines connecting each of the 81 intersection points; there are four two-line points at the corners of the board, twenty-eight three-line points along the edges of the board, and forty-nine four-line points in the interior of the board. Each connecting line is one of the two colors. In the blank sample board depicted here, each intersection point is addressed with a column (A through I) and row number (1 through 9).
Each player has seven pieces of the same two colors as the marked lines (e.g. blue and red). In the patent, it is suggested the pieces have one side plain and the other side marked to facilitate three or four-player games, where multiple players work together as a team.[1] The starting position for each player's seven pieces is in the rank closest to that player, as designated by the diamonds in Row 1 and Row 9, on the example board illustrated.
Variations
Denham describes and illustrates variant game boards with non-square unit cells, including rhombuses, hexagons, and octagons. For each of these -sided unit cells, sides are one color, while sides are the opposing colors, where , rounded down to the nearest integer.[1]
