Hi all! I’ve been building a Go variant played on a hexagonal board. Same rules you already know, but the geometry changes the game: there is no ko (immediate ko can’t arise on a hex grid) and there are no ladders. It’s free and browser-based, with live clocks, and no account needed.
Right now the game goes by “Badux”, but that’s a working title. I’m choosing the permanent name and would love your input - a quick anonymous vote, about a dozen taps, no signup:
If you visit and nobody’s around, the bots are always up for a game. The best time to find humans is Community Game Night, every Thursday at 8 PM Eastern (midnight UTC): show up, post an open invite in the lobby, and play as long as you like. Between games we hang out in Discord:
The site is https://baduxgo.com. Solo project, still rough in places - wide open to feedback.
Thanks! you’re not the first person to ask that. I am not opposed to the idea. There are two problems I have with the name “badux”:
There are multiple plausible pronunciations - mainly whether the U sound is long or short (as in flute or put, respectively) - which is confusing.
It spells out “bad UX.” UX is a standard acronym for “User Experience,” which describes how a user feels using an application. So an application with bad UX is no good.
Neither one is a deal-breaker, but both of them are bothersome, at least to me. Maybe I am just overly sensitive to how bad the UX on my site is. It used to be a lot worse!
I probably should have included Badux Go in the survey too…
a few times against different people at iggamecenter, using that
site’s Sandbox rather than an implementation of specifically this
and
somewhat over a dozen times more recently
against the same other person, using text boards
.
My preferred Board Size is 8x8x8 , due to the combination of
If one player gets the whole 2nd line and the other player gets the whole 3rd line,
then on 7x7x7 the edges player wins, whereas on 8x8x8 the center player wins.
with
8x8x8 happens to have exactly as many intersections as a 13x13 square board.
I have thought about making physical boards! I was looking at these game mats, which would be cost effective, and reasonably good at getting the stones to stay put:
They have different sizes here:
I would love to print some of these up and set up a storefront, but I should probably settle on a new game name first.
What size boards are you most interested in? The smaller 6x6x6 board, or the full sized 12x12x12?
Yeah, I’ve made some real wood boards, with the help of a family member who is a woodworker.
I found out there an easy way to draw a regular hexagon with a compass, starting with one of the sides. Looks possible.
Have you tried any dimensions in particular? I might try 24mm between intersections, which could be a bit oversized but I’d prefer that for a first attempt.
As for the size of the grid, it might depend on what wood I have, but I’d go for the bigger 12x12x12 size if it’s playtested ok.
I’d love to have boards in any or all of the 6x6x6, 8x8x8, or 12x12x12 sizes. I ran the numbers against BoardGamesMaker’s stock sizes, and all three badux board sizes fit on off-the-shelf mats at standard Go board spacing (22–23.7mm between points). The 6x6x6 fits a 10"×10" mat (or 11.4"×9.4" with more breathing room), the 8x8x8 fits a 14"×12" at the tighter 22mm Japanese spacing, and the 12x12x12 fits comfortably on a 23.5"×28" with plenty of room left over for artwork.
Of course, a real wooden board would be awesome! I’d gladly buy one from you if you end up making any extras. Let me know how it goes! I will look into those mats more carefully in a month or two, after the name question is settled.
You mentioned the official spacing of 22mm width and 23.7mm height. That’s what I made my rectangular boards with.
With the hex board, the geometry is breaking my brain a bit. In theory, 4 circles touching in a sqaure, and 3 circles touching in a triangle, the grids formed by connecting the centers of the circles, have the same distance between intersection right!? That is, twice the radius of the circles?
I think 23 or 24mm would be the right spacing. First step would be to draw it on paper, see if it works with my stones.
To start with 23mm (feel free to check my hexagon trigonometry)
Side length (call it L) is 253mm
Width turns out to be 2 x L is 506mm. Plus 12mm margins is 530mm
Height is sqrt(3) x L*.*Because the height is 2 x L x cosine(30). 407mm plus margins is 431mm.
On a hex grid, yes, twice the stone radius - with some margin - should work. The stones will crowd tighter than on a square board, so, e.g., picking out a captured stone from the board might be trickier than on a square board using the same amount of margin. Which supports your intuition of having a wider margin than on a standard square board.
My AI thinks it caught an error in your height calculation:
Check your height again though — I think a digit slipped. √3 × 253 = 438mm, not 407 (407 is √3 × 235). So 12x12x12 at 23mm spacing is 506 × 438 point-to-point, or 530 × 462 with your 12mm margins. At 24mm it’s 528 × 457, plus margins.
You probably want to add some extra buffer around the edge of the board. Otherwise, a stone on a corner point would splay right up to the edge.
On the lines being a nightmare — I don’t think they will be, and you don’t need to draw a honeycomb. The cells are just the dual of a triangular lattice, so that’s just three families of straight parallel lines at 60°, stones on the intersections. For 12x12x12 that’s 23 lines in each direction. Better still, every line runs boundary-to-boundary, so the whole construction is:
rule the hexagon outline (compass, side = radius, as you found)
mark 12 evenly spaced points along each of the 6 edges — 66 marks, all on straight lines, all at your pitch
connect corresponding edge points with a straightedge
All 397 intersections fall out of that, with zero interior measuring, and the 6 outermost grid lines are the outline, so you’re not drawing it twice.
I got my AI to make you these PDFs, in case they are useful:
