Agon, also sold as Queen's Guard, is a two player abstract strategy game published in London in 1842 and the oldest known board game played on hexagonal cells. Each side commands one queen and six guards on a hexagonal board of 91 hexes arranged in six rings around a central throne. Pieces may only step sideways or inwards, never back out, so every turn brings the race closer to the middle, and the winner is the first to seat their queen on the throne with all six of her guards ringed around her.
How to Play Agon: Learn the Rules
Agon, also sold as Queen's Guard, is a two player abstract strategy game published in London in 1842 and the oldest known board game played on hexagonal cells. Each side commands one queen and six guards on a hexagonal board of 91 hexes arranged in six rings around a central throne. Pieces may only step sideways or inwards, never back out, so every turn brings the race closer to the middle, and the winner is the first to seat their queen on the throne with all six of her guards ringed around her.
Objective
The goal of Agon is to place your queen on the throne, the single hex at the centre of the board, and to fill all six hexes touching it with your own six guards. Nothing less counts: a queen alone on the throne has not won, and six guards around a throne your queen does not hold is an immediate forfeit. Because pieces can never move back outwards, the whole game is a controlled march inwards in which the order your pieces arrive matters as much as how fast they get there.
Setup
The board is a hexagon six cells to a side: 91 hexagonal cells forming six concentric rings around the throne. Each player has one queen and six guards, and all fourteen pieces start on the outermost ring of 30 cells. The two queens begin on opposite corners of that ring. Each player's guards are spaced evenly around it, two of them four cells from their own queen on either side and the other four two and six cells from the enemy queen on either side, which makes the whole opening position symmetric under a half turn of the board. The first player moves first.
Gameplay
Players alternate turns, moving one piece per turn. A piece steps to a single adjacent cell that must be empty, either sideways within its current ring or inwards to the next ring in. No piece may ever move outwards, none may jump, and only the queen may enter the throne. You may not move a piece onto a cell where it would sit directly between two enemy pieces in a straight line. When your move does leave an enemy piece caught between two of your own pieces in a straight line, that piece is captured where it stands. It is not removed: on their next turn its owner must spend the whole turn putting it back, a guard onto any vacant cell of the outer ring and the queen onto any vacant cell of the board. Only one caught piece goes back per turn, and a caught queen must be returned before any caught guard.
Winning
You win the moment your queen stands on the throne with your six guards on the six cells around her. If your six guards come to fill those cells while your own queen is not on the throne, you forfeit the game at once, which is why the queen has to arrive before the ring is closed. A player who begins a turn with no legal move loses, and since pieces only ever move inwards or sideways this can happen when a side becomes completely hemmed in near the centre. A position repeated three times is drawn.
Objective
The goal of Agon is to place your queen on the throne, the single hex at the centre of the board, and to fill all six hexes touching it with your own six guards. Nothing less counts: a queen alone on the throne has not won, and six guards around a throne your queen does not hold is an immediate forfeit. Because pieces can never move back outwards, the whole game is a controlled march inwards in which the order your pieces arrive matters as much as how fast they get there.
Setup
The board is a hexagon six cells to a side: 91 hexagonal cells forming six concentric rings around the throne. Each player has one queen and six guards, and all fourteen pieces start on the outermost ring of 30 cells. The two queens begin on opposite corners of that ring. Each player's guards are spaced evenly around it, two of them four cells from their own queen on either side and the other four two and six cells from the enemy queen on either side, which makes the whole opening position symmetric under a half turn of the board. The first player moves first.
Gameplay
Players alternate turns, moving one piece per turn. A piece steps to a single adjacent cell that must be empty, either sideways within its current ring or inwards to the next ring in. No piece may ever move outwards, none may jump, and only the queen may enter the throne. You may not move a piece onto a cell where it would sit directly between two enemy pieces in a straight line. When your move does leave an enemy piece caught between two of your own pieces in a straight line, that piece is captured where it stands. It is not removed: on their next turn its owner must spend the whole turn putting it back, a guard onto any vacant cell of the outer ring and the queen onto any vacant cell of the board. Only one caught piece goes back per turn, and a caught queen must be returned before any caught guard.
Winning
You win the moment your queen stands on the throne with your six guards on the six cells around her. If your six guards come to fill those cells while your own queen is not on the throne, you forfeit the game at once, which is why the queen has to arrive before the ring is closed. A player who begins a turn with no legal move loses, and since pieces only ever move inwards or sideways this can happen when a side becomes completely hemmed in near the centre. A position repeated three times is drawn.
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