This game was inspired by Sid Sackson's “Fields of Action”, which was in turn inspired by Claude Souci's “Lines of Action”. The initial setup concept was inspired by Sackson's “Sly”.

Take 16 tiles and place them grid-side up in a 4×4 square. This creates a playing grid of 64 spaces.

Place all 24 coins at random in the center of the grid, 6 across, 4 down, suit-side up.

Arrange all six coins of a suit to line up in one row or column.

A single coin moves by jumping over spaces (occupied or empty) in its row or column. It must land on an empty space. The number of matching suits in that row or column defines the number of spaces a coin can jump. If a coin is the only one in the row, it may only jump one space. If there are two, it must jump two spaces, no more, no less. The same rules apply to three, four, five or six coins.

If a tile is full and has four coins, it can rotate or shift.

A tile may do one or the other, not both. Once you rotate or shift a tile, you have to move a coin from it. At no time do you have to rotate or shift a tile, it is optional.

Either rotate the tile by 90º, 180º or 270º.

Or shift it orthogonally in any direction to the next empty tile-space.

The game ends when six coins of the same suit line up in one row or column.

Scoring is optional. Count the amount of moves it takes you to win. The least amount of moves wins.

Some setups will be easier than others. If you wish to compare your scores with others, you should share your exact setup with them.

Try lining up all the coins of more than one suit. Doing that with all four suits is the hardest.

Here is a sample setup.

Copyright © 2003 by L. Edward Pulley. Permission is granted to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, to make derivative works, and to make commercial use of the work, as long as credit is given to the original author, and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.