Havannah is an abstract strategy board game invented by Christiaan Freeling. It is played on a hexagonal board consisting of hexagonal spaces; a common size is eight hexes to a side, but ten hexes to a side (169 total) is common at higher levels of play. Havannah belongs to the family of games commonly called connection games; its relatives include Hex and TwixT.

One player plays as Black; the other plays as White. Either may start, but the pie rule is commonly used to keep the first player from having a great advantage. The rules are as follows:

  • Each player places one stone of their colour on the board per turn; play then passes to their opponent.
  • Stones are never moved, captured, or otherwise changed.
  • A player wins when they complete one of three different structures from unbroken lines, or paths, of connected stones, all of their colour:
    • A ring, which is a loop around one or more points (occupied or empty);
    • A bridge, which connects any two of the six corners of the board; or
    • A fork, which connects any three edges of the board; corner points are not considered parts of an edge.

An example of all three winning combinations is as follows, with number signs as black stones and periods as empty spaces:

       . . # . . . . #
      . # # . . . . # .
     . # . . . . . # . .
    . # . . . . . . # # .
   # # . . . . . . . . # . 
  . . # . . # # # . . . # . 
 . . . # . # . . # . . # . .
. . . # . . # # . # . . # # #
 . . . # . . . # # . . . . .
  . . # . . . . . . . . . .
   . . # . . . . . . . . .
    . # . . . . . . . . .
     . # # . . . . . . .
      . . # . . . . . .
       . . # . . . . .
The structure in the centre of the board is a ring; the structure on the left-hand side is a fork; the structure on the right-hand side is a bridge.

While draws are technically possible, in practice they are extremely rare.

The game was published for a period of time in Germany by Ravensburger.

Havannah is playable on Richard Rognlie's play-by-eMail server.

References