Diversion

The game is played on an 18 by 24 square board on which are a pair of home bases for each player, one on each of the short sides of the board. Six barriers are placed in predetermined positions on the board. Each player has two playing pieces and places them off the board next to his bases. He has 3 sets of tiles each set consisting of five tiles, one each of lenght 2 to 6 but only has access to one set at the start of the game. On the first turn each player in turn places one of his tiles orthogonally such that it covers his home base and no other home base, and moves his playing piece onto the far end of that tile. On subsequent turns a player may start building from his other base or continue from where he has got to by playing a tile that must link up by overlapping at least one square side with his existing tiles. The connected playing piece is moved to the free end of this tile. However, each tile played MUST be longer than the last played tile and players must play if they can legally do so. Each time a player is forced to pass, the next player gets a free move which consists of one of: Move a barrier, move his playing piece onto or along another player's track or lay any length tile he chooses. As soon as one player runs out of tiles, all players take their next set. The first player to bring his two playing pieces to orthoganally adjacent squares is the winner but if one player runs out of tiles then the player with his playing pieces the closest together wins.