Fox and Geese
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- Category
- Board
- Players
- 1
- Controls
- Tap
- Sides
- Uneven
- Loads
- No install
Controls
| Tap a goose | Select it. |
| Tap an empty point | Move it one step. |
Next up
| Tap a goose | Select it. |
| Tap an empty point | Move it one step. |
Fox and Geese is one of the oldest asymmetric board games in Europe. One fox faces a flock of geese on a cross-shaped board. The fox jumps geese to remove them; the geese cannot jump at all, and win only by hemming the fox in so completely that it has nowhere to move.
Playing the geese teaches something unusual: you win by advancing as a wall, never as individuals. A single goose pushed ahead of the line is simply food, and the whole skill is resisting the urge to chase.
Advance in a solid line. Geese are only safe when they have no gaps between them, because a gap is exactly what the fox jumps into.
Never leave a goose with an empty square directly behind it. That is the entire condition for being jumped, and checking it before each move prevents almost every loss.
Push the fox toward a corner. The arms of the cross are where it runs out of escape squares, so herding it there is how the geese actually win.
Accept losing a goose occasionally. You start with far more than you need, and trading one to close a gap in your line is usually the right decision.
By jumping over a goose into the empty square directly beyond it.
No. They move one step at a time, which is what makes the game asymmetric.
By surrounding the fox so it has no legal move at all.
Very. Versions of it have been played across northern Europe for many centuries.
Nothing at all. The whole of Fox and Geese is built into the page itself, which is why there is no loading bar and no waiting before you can play.