Winner of the 2018 Best Combinatorial Game award, Blooms is a 2-player game where players capture each other’s pieces by surrounding them.

It was inspired by the classical game Go and a painting in an Oregon coffee shop.

Rules

Bloom: a bloom is an entire group of connected stones on the board of the same color. A single stone (unconnected to others of the same color) is also a bloom.

Fenced: a bloom is fenced when there are no empty spaces adjacent to any of the bloom’s stones.

Gameplay

Each player owns 2 colors of stones. To start, Player 1 places 1 stone of either of her colors on any empty space.
From then on, starting with Player 2, the players take turns. On your turn, you must place 1 or 2 stones onto any empty spaces. If you place 2, they must be different colors. Then capture all fenced enemy blooms.
The first player to have captured X stones wins.

The key is you can and usually should sacrifice your own stones to gain positional advantage. It's common for players to get 10 or more points down in games played to 20, and still win. This is important because new players often don't see the value of sacrifice and lose without having any idea what happened, which isn't fun.

See diagrams and gifs here
Play online at Board Game Arena

U.S. Telegraph