Attraction an unheralded gem from a quarter of a century ago

I recently posed a question with the Abstract Nation on Facebook asking what were three games players preferred on an 8x8 checkerboard.

Not surprisingly there was a lot of commonality in answers and IMHO a few gems missed.

So over the coming weeks I’ll offer a few short reviews of what I see as the best games to be played on an 8x8 checkerboard with the added constraint you have only two sets of 24 pieces – basically you buy two matching common checker sets.

This is #9.

As I continue my 8x8 & 48 project I step back to the last year of the last millennium where I find the largely unheralded gem; Attraction.

As noted this one from designer Mathieu Rivier with a published version from Dujardin came out in 1999, and if there was fanfare then it didn’t last obviously, and frankly it should have.

Attraction is a game which will make you think hard, and it will take your mind in different directions from most games, and those two things are good when looking into abstract strategy games.

This is one of those games where the goal is familiar, move all of your pieces across the board to the initial spots where your opponent’s pieces started.

Each player has eight pieces starting on opposite sides of the board.

Where the ‘thinking’ comes in is in how pieces moves.

The pieces -- by the thin theme here the planets -- may move in orbits around another orthogonally adjacent stone of either colour – again from the planetary theme termed the gravity centre. So the moving stone can move to an empty cell which is orthogonally adjacent to the gravity center.

The tricky element is that an isolated piece/planet cannot move.

By contrast, you are looking to chain moves. Orbits, or swings around that gravity centre, are multiple, after one orbit, the moving piece can continue to move, if the direction remains the same -- if it began clockwise, it must continue counterclockwise, or vice versa.

Adding to the move options and giving you one more thing to look for, is that if there is a third ‘planet’ in front of a possible orbit, the orbiting stone can move to its place and push that stone to the immediate next empty cell in the same direction of the orbit). If that next immediate cell occupied, the gravity push is not possible.

The movement here is perhaps not unique, but I have not seen it before that I recall, and that really enhances play. Something which is so different is challenging in that uniqueness.

In terms of ‘crossing’ games, and there are many, this one is certainly among the best and since it fits this project perfectly, Attraction is highly recommended.