Description

Thruway is a two-player connection game with many twists and turns. Two not-so-civil engineers attempt to build a thruway across the landscape while his or her opponent contests the right of way.

The game of Thruway requires the following components:

• 120 road section tiles; 60 gray concrete tiles and 60 black asphalt tiles.
• One 11 x 11 square landscape game board with 121 parcels of land cells.

The landscape game board is empty at the beginning of the game.

The concrete player tries to connect the east and west borders. The asphalt player tries to connect the north and south borders.

The concrete player plays first. Then on the asphalt player's first turn only, if he or she feels the concrete player has too much advantage from the placement of the first two concrete tiles, the asphalt player may opt to trade tiles and roles. The asphalt player becomes the concrete player and vice versa. Whether or not roles are reversed, the asphalt player then takes a turn. Player turns then alternate for the rest of the game. Players may not pass a turn unless they have no legal move. Consecutive passes can never occur.

During a turn, an engineer may do any one of the following three actions:
1. Pave a road without replacement,
2. Pave a road with replacement, or
3. Resolve a crossroads dispute by swapping tiles.

To pave a road without replacement, a player places two of his or her road sections on two horizontally or vertically adjacent empty parcels of land.

To pave a road with replacement, a player places two of his or her road sections on two horizontally or vertically adjacent parcels of land, where one parcel is empty and the other cell contains an opponent's road section. The replaced road section is recycled to its owner's reserve.

When a 2 x 2 square of land parcels is occupied by four road sections where asphalt and concrete roads occupy the two diagonals, this is called a crossroads dispute.

Crossroads Disputes
ox
xo or

xo
ox

A player may resolve a crossroads dispute in either of two ways:
1. by swapping any asphalt and concrete road sections along an edge of the 2 x 2 square, or,
2. if possible, by paving with replacement.

When swapping is used to resolve the dispute, only one swap per player turn is allowed. New crossroad disputes may arise due to the resolution of a dispute. In this case, the resolution of the newly formed dispute(s) may not immediately recreate the first dispute. This restriction, which prevents position repetition, applies only to your opponent's immediate response. On later player turns, the resolution can be reversed by either player.

A road section is indestructible, only if, all its adjacent north, south, east and west land parcels (that exist on the game board) have been paved by either player and it is not part of a crossroads dispute.

Goal: The first civil engineer to pave a thruway (connected path of horizontally and/or vertically adjacent indestructible road sections) connecting their two sides of the landscape wins the game.