Fjorde

Fjorde is a Hans Im Glueck game which shares a few concepts with Go.

In its abstract form, it's a two player game with two phases.

• In the first phase players take turns, increasing the board and creating up to four poles for growth each.
• In the second phase, taking turns as well, the board is occupied, spreading from the poles.

It is very easy to see that influence is the most important concept here. There is also a strong presence of the Territory concept, since you can prevent the opponent of growing into certain areas. Poles with overlapping influence suffer from overconcentration. The second phase reminds a lot of endgame counting in Go, with a small flavour of sente and a lot of miai.

There is no doubt in my mind that the author of this game knows Go. There is no plagiarism though - it's rather a nice combination of Go and a game like Carcassonne.

--Dieter