Cathedral (board game)

Cathedral is two player abstract strategy board game based around a battle between two factions ('dark' and 'light') for supremacy within the bounds of a medieval city.

History

Cathedral was invented between 1962 and 1979 by Robert Moore, a pilot in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Inspiration for the game was provided by the Cathedral and its environs in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Overview

The idea of the game is to capture territory on the game board, allowing you to place all of your gamepieces while preventing your opponent from doing likewise.

Rules

The game is played on a 10x10 grid of squares, representing a walled city. Whichever player is using the 'light' pieces places the Cathedral anywhere within the play area, aligned with the squares. Next the 'dark' player places one of their game pieces on the board. Play alternates between the two sides until one side is unable to make a move. At this point, the other side attempts to place all of their remaining pieces in areas they have captured.

Players may capture territory within the city by completely enclosing it with their pieces alone, or with the help of the city walls. Boundaries of these areas must be 'wall to wall', i.e. if two of the surrounding pieces only touch on their corners, that's not a capture. If the captured territory contains one and only one of the opponent's pieces or the cathedral, that piece may be removed and the opponent may no longer place pieces in that area. An opponents piece so removed can return to play at a later stage, but the cathedral will remain absent for the remainder of the game. If the territory contains more than one piece, it is not captured and ramains available for the opponent to use.

The winner is the player who manages to place all of their pieces, while preventing their opponent from doing so. If neither player is able to place all of their pieces, then the player whose remaining pieces would take up the smaller area is declared the winner.

When playing multiple games in a row, players alternate placing the Cathedral and moving first. At the end of each game, each player gets a score based on the number of squares that their opponent's remaining buildings would occupy.

References

• http://www.cathedral-game.co.nz/index.html - Cathedral Homepage