Mind Ninja
Mind Ninja is a simple abstract strategy game for 2 players, which will appeal to anyone who likes playing with visual patterns. In the game, the players invent a visual pattern, and then the players take turns coloring in spaces on a board. One player tries to build the pattern while the other tries to prevent him from doing so. The player who succeeds in his goal wins.
It’s unique among board games in that the players themselves invent the win condition when the game starts, in a way that ensures both that equally-skilled players have equal chances to win, and that draws and ties are impossible. This feature leads to great variety and depth of play.
It can be played with stones of two (or more) colors on any tiled surface. Alternatively, it can be played with paper and colored markers. Printable game boards for this purpose are available at the Mind Ninja website:
The game is also a generalization of the the game of Hex, which means that the set of all possible ways that a game of Hex can play out is a subset of the set of all the possible ways a game of Mind Ninja can play out. Mind Ninja is a generalization many other games as well, including Go-moku (5-in-a-row), One-Capture Go, Y, Poly-Y, and Star, among others.