Description

ACNOS: acknowledge the potential

ACNOS is a competitive abstract strategy game for two players. In ACNOS, players manipulate armies of shapes within a standard 8x8 chessboard with a win condition of either capturing the opponent’s treasure square, or depriving the opponent of a legal move.

There are 24 pieces per side in ACNOS, each of which has unique move sets determined by the arrows shown on their face. Throughout the game, pieces get placed on the board, moved according to their arrows, flipped to produce mirror images, rotated in multiples of 90 degrees, or merged to create more powerful shapes. During setup, players secretly choose a treasure square and 8 pieces to surround it. Each turn, players choose to activate one of three abilities (place a new piece on the board under your control, build a blockade to remove a square from the board, or declare a merge between two pieces to make a stack), then choose two different pieces under their control and move them. Initially, pieces are limited to 2 shapes per merge stack, but when a piece makes it to the other side of the board, it can teleport home by moving off the opponents back rank, thereby deepening its merge potential by one extra piece.

ACNOS is extremely complex (over 10^35 legal setups, 36 million possible states per square, over 200 thousand legal first moves on average), and rewards deep strategic thinking, careful planning, and tactical calculations. Acknowledge the potential, and capture your opponent’s treasure! NOTE: For casual play, reserve pieces are drawn randomly from a bag, with each “next piece” being public information. For tournaments, players determine the order of reserve pieces during setup phase, and the entire order becomes public information when the veil is lifted.