let the pieces move.

This is the point where design stops being only symbolic. A piece may have a good name, a strong role, and a clear place inside the warband, but the real test begins when it enters the board. Does it create useful pressure? Does it overlap too much with another piece? Does it make the game more readable, or only more complicated?

The current prototype is built around a simple principle:

one action, one turn.

A player chooses one figure, makes one move, one capture, or one shot, and then the consequences are passed to the next side. This keeps the rhythm clear, especially because the board is meant to support more than a two-player duel. In games with three, four, or six sides, even one small move may create an opening for someone else.

So the figures cannot be too complicated individually.
The complexity should come from the board, the center, and the interaction between roles.

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The board needs pressure, but also air

One of the first balance questions was density.

The warband cannot be too large, because the board needs space. If too many figures appear too early, the game stops being about positioning and becomes a traffic jam. Lines close before they become meaningful. The Throne becomes crowded before players have time to create plans.

But the warband also cannot be too small or too uniform.

If every piece solves the same problem, the game becomes flat. A real group — whether we think about it as a warband, an army, or a small society — does not work as a collection of identical functions. Someone leads. Someone protects. Someone fights in contact. Someone controls distance. Someone raids. Someone creates the exceptional moment of breakthrough.

That became the central design question:

not how many pieces can fit on the board, but how many different roles the board can support without losing clarity.

The current set is built around that spectrum.

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The Knyaz — the claim

The Knyaz is the most important figure, but not the strongest fighter.

That distinction is important. If the leader were also the most powerful unit, the game would become too direct. The player would simply push the strongest piece toward the center and try to force victory through combat.

Instead, the Knyaz moves slowly: one hex in any of the six directions. He can capture adjacent enemies, but he has no special attack, no jump, no ranged power.

His strength is positional and symbolic.

Only the Knyaz can claim the Throne. When he enters the center, the game does not end immediately. The claim has to survive. The opposing players get time to react, attack, block, or use the chaos for their own advantage.

This makes the Throne less like a finish line and more like a public declaration.

Reaching the center is not the end.
It is the beginning of danger.

The Footman / Shield-Bearer — the body

The Footman is the simplest figure, but that does not make him unimportant.

He moves one hex in any direction and captures adjacent enemies. His rules are easy to understand. His value comes from placement.

The Shield-Bearer holds space, blocks lines, protects more important figures, and gives the warband its body. He does not create an invisible aura of control. Enemies can stand next to him. His defense is physical: he occupies a hex, blocks a line, and shields what stands behind him.

This became especially important in relation to the Archer.

A ranged figure can easily become too powerful if nothing answers it. The Shield-Bearer gives the game that answer. He cannot be removed by a distant shot, and he can protect figures behind him.

That means the weakest-looking piece creates one of the most important defensive structures in the game.

The Warrior — contact

The Warrior is the main contact fighter.

He moves up to two hexes along a legal path and can turn during that movement. This makes him useful in the crowded middle of the board, where straight lines are often blocked and small changes of direction matter.

He does not jump.
He does not shoot.
He does not have a special rule for the Throne.

His strength is reliability.

The Warrior is the piece that contests space directly. He removes threats, supports the Knyaz, fights in the center, and adapts to local pressure. In early balance thinking, this kind of figure can easily become too good, because flexibility is useful almost everywhere.

So the goal is not to make the Warrior weak. The goal is to make sure he is not universal.

He should be good in contact, but he should not replace the Skirmisher’s line pressure, the Archer’s distance, the Shield-Bearer’s protection, or the Banner’s breakthrough.

The Skirmisher / Harrier — the line

The Skirmisher exists because the Warrior should not be the only aggressive piece.

Where the Warrior is flexible, the Skirmisher is directional. He moves up to two hexes in a straight line. He cannot turn during the move, but he can jump over a piece on the first hex of the line and land beyond it, if the final hex is legal.

This gives him a different tempo.

He is not made for slow central wrestling. He is made for sudden pressure, punishing bad alignment, and breaking through a screen. He can capture at distance one or two, but only along the line of movement.

The difference is simple:

The Warrior bends.
The Skirmisher cuts through.

That contrast is one of the key balance relationships in the set. The two pieces may both be combat figures, but they ask different questions.

The Warrior asks: how do I fight in the crowd?
The Skirmisher asks: where is the line I can exploit?

The Archer / Marksman — distance

The Archer is the figure that makes empty space dangerous.

Without ranged pressure, most threats are local. You mainly fear what stands next to you or what can reach you in the next move. The Archer changes that. A clear line across the board becomes a threat even before anything moves into contact.

In the current rules, the Archer moves one hex, but his main strength is the shot. He can shoot in a straight line at a distance of two or three hexes. The shot does not move the Archer; the target is removed, and the Archer stays where he is.

This is powerful, so it needs limits.

The Archer cannot shoot through any occupied hex. Any piece blocks the line. He also cannot shoot a Shield-Bearer from distance. If a Shield-Bearer stands in the line, he protects himself and anything behind him.

There is also a close-combat restriction: if an enemy stands adjacent to the Archer, the Archer cannot ignore that enemy and shoot somewhere else. He must deal with the immediate threat.

That rule matters because it prevents the Archer from becoming detached from the rest of the game. He controls lines, but he is not safe by default. He needs protection. He needs positioning. He needs distance.

The Archer should feel dangerous, but conditional.

A good Archer position makes the opponent uncomfortable.
A bad Archer position becomes a liability.

The Banner / Chorągiew — controlled breakthrough

The Banner is the most exceptional figure in the warband.

It is not meant to be common. Its role is not to fight like a Warrior or simply raid like a Skirmisher. The Banner exists to create a controlled moment of breakthrough.

In the current prototype, its special value comes from planned movement and landing. It can move farther than ordinary pieces, but the important part is how its capture works. A Banner attack is not only about removing an enemy figure. It is also about where the Banner ends after the action.

That makes it tactical rather than merely strong.

A capture may be good because it removes a threat.
It may be better because it lands the Banner in a protected position.
It may be decisive because it opens the path for the Knyaz.
It may be bad if the landing leaves the Banner exposed.

This is why the Banner has to remain limited. If many figures could attack and reposition with this level of control, the whole board would become unstable. Defensive lines would collapse too easily.

The Banner should feel like a rare instrument.

Not the army.
Not the ruler.
The moment of breakthrough.

Why the pieces need each other

The balance of the game does not come from making every figure equally strong in the same way.

It comes from making each figure necessary for a different reason.

The Knyaz gives the game its objective.
The Shield-Bearer protects and blocks.
The Warrior fights in contact.
The Skirmisher creates linear pressure.
The Archer controls distance.
The Banner creates breakthrough.

This is also why the movement rules are intentionally simple. Most figures have one clear movement idea. The depth should not come from memorizing exceptions. It should come from combining roles.

A Shield-Bearer in the right place can make an Archer useless.
An Archer in the right place can freeze a careless formation.
A Warrior can clean the center, but not jump through a line.
A Skirmisher can jump through a line, but cannot turn.
A Banner can create a dramatic opening, but cannot be everywhere.
A Knyaz can win the game, but only if the others make survival possible.

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The interface as a soft tutorial

The prototype already helps teach these relationships visually.

Movement, captures, shots, range previews, blocked targets, landing fields, and threatened hexes are not only interface features. They are part of the design process. They show whether a rule is readable.

Some rules sound complicated in text but become clear when highlighted on the board.

For example, the Archer’s blocked shot against a Shield-Bearer is easier to understand when the player sees the target marked as visible but illegal. The Banner’s landing rule is easier to understand when the possible landing fields appear after selecting the target.

This is the kind of tutorial I prefer: not a separate lesson, but a board that explains itself while being played.

What the first playable version suggests

At this stage, the game feels most promising when each figure keeps its own identity.

The pieces do not need to be overloaded. The board already creates pressure through geometry, the Throne, player count, and turn order. If the roles are clear, the rules can remain relatively clean.

The current balance is not final. It still needs more testing, especially across different numbers of players and against different styles of play. But the direction feels right:

protect the Knyaz,
respect the Archer’s lines,
use Shield-Bearers to block,
send Warriors into contact,
look for Skirmisher lines,
save the Banner for the right moment,
and remember that the Throne is not won by reaching it, but by surviving there.

That is where the game begins to move.

What kind of figures should actually stand on this board?

At first, this may sound like a purely mechanical problem. A strategy game needs pieces. Pieces need movement. Movement needs limits. Limits create tactics. But I did not want the pieces to appear only as abstract functions with decorative names attached at the end.

The game already had a certain direction. It was built around a hexagonal board, a central Throne, and a Knyaz trying to turn a position into a claim. The board was not designed only for a two-sided duel, but also for three, four, and six-sided conflicts. That meant the figures had to work in several different densities and political situations: direct confrontation, triangular pressure, team play, unstable fronts, and full multi-sided rivalry.

So the pieces had to do several things at once.

They had to be readable.
They had to be tactically distinct.
They had to carry some cultural weight.
They had to leave enough space for movement.
And they had to feel like a group, not a random list of fantasy classes.

The image that helped me most was the warband.

Not a modern army. Not a fully formed kingdom. Not a bureaucratic military structure. More like a compact group gathered around a leader: fighters, shield-bearers, archers, raiders, and one figure whose claim gives the whole formation its purpose.

In Slavic contexts, the word druzhina is often used for a retinue or warband in the service of a chieftain or knyaz. The historical reality changed across time and region, but as a design image it was useful: a group close enough to feel personal, organized enough to fight, but not yet absorbed into the machinery of a fully developed state.

That was the scale I wanted.

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Between the Hunt and the Battlefield

Before the current set of pieces took shape, I considered a different direction: the hunt.

That idea had some strength. Before crowns, thrones, and formal claims of rule, there is the group moving together through the world. A hunting party already contains roles. Someone tracks. Someone waits. Someone drives the animal forward. Someone gives a signal, maybe with a horn. Someone strikes at the right moment.

There is coordination, tension, risk, and shared purpose.

For a while, this felt close to what I wanted. The center of the board could have been prey, treasure, a sacred animal, or some kind of prize. The group would not be fighting for a Throne, but pursuing something older and more immediate.

But the more I thought about it, the more that image felt too small for this game.

The hunt gave me movement and teamwork, but not enough symbolic pressure. It was practical, maybe even more fundamental to human life than the idea of a crown, but it did not create the same sense of ambition, visibility, danger, and transformation.

The game needed something between survival and sovereignty.

That is why the hunting party gradually turned into a warband. The traces of the hunt are still there: pursuit, spacing, timing, surrounding, reading the field. But those skills are now redirected toward human rivalry. The animal in the center becomes a Throne. The prize becomes authority. The group becomes political.

This shift also helped me avoid making the pieces too literal.

I did not want a “horn-blower” piece just because someone might have used a horn. I did not want a “beater” or “driver” piece just because hunting parties can include such roles. Those figures might be historically or anthropologically interesting, but on the board they risked becoming too narrow. They belonged more to a scene than to a system.

The figures had to be broader than that.

They had to express roles that could survive abstraction.

History, Pop Culture, and the Problem of Weapons

Another problem was weapons.

If this game were trying to be strictly historical, the sword would not automatically be the obvious weapon of the ordinary fighter. In many early medieval contexts, weapons such as spears, axes, bows, knives, and shields were central to practical warfare. Swords existed, of course, but they carried cost, prestige, and status in ways that make them different from the generic “default weapon” often seen in modern fantasy.

At the same time, modern players bring their own visual expectations. For many people, the word “warrior” immediately calls up the image of a sword. It may not be historically balanced, but it is culturally readable.

The spear creates an even more interesting problem.

On one hand, it is one of the most practical and common weapons across human history. It is simple in principle, efficient, and widely usable. On the other hand, the spear can also become highly symbolic. It can be associated with status, command, ritual, or elevated meaning. Recent finds from Lake Lednica in Poland, for example, include early medieval spearheads, one of them richly decorated and interpreted by archaeologists as possibly connected to elite status, ritual, or power; the same site has yielded far more axes and spearheads than swords.

This creates a useful design lesson: historical accuracy does not translate directly into good game identity.

A piece cannot simply be “the spear” because the spear can mean too many things. It can be ordinary and elite. Practical and symbolic. Infantry weapon and sign of authority. If treated too literally, it becomes unclear what role it should play.

So the question had to change.

Not: which weapon was most historically correct?
But: what kind of role does the game need, and what image makes that role understandable?

That is why the final pieces are not equipment cards. They are tactical identities.

How Many Roles Can the Board Carry?

The number of pieces also had to come from the board itself.

The board is large enough to create meaningful movement, but not so large that each side can simply expand without consequence. It has to support different forms of play: a direct duel, three-sided pressure, four-sided confrontation, and potentially six competing forces on the same field. That creates a very practical design problem.

A set that feels rich in a two-player game can become overcrowded when multiplied by six.
A set that feels open with six players can feel empty or underdeveloped in a duel.

So before deciding the exact number of pieces, I had to think about something more basic: how many roles the game actually needs.

There cannot be too many. If every player brings a large formation onto the board, the game quickly loses air. Pieces stop moving freely. Lines close too early. The center becomes congested before meaningful decisions have time to develop. At that point, the game risks becoming less about strategy and more about traffic.

But there also cannot be too few. If the warband is too small or too uniform, then every piece starts to solve the same problem. The game becomes flatter. The player no longer has to think in terms of protection, pressure, distance, breakthrough, or sacrifice. Everything becomes merely “a piece that moves and captures.”

That would miss the point.

Neither an army nor a society works as a group of identical functions. Even a small band needs differentiation. Someone leads. Someone protects. Someone holds the line. Someone strikes quickly. Someone controls distance. Someone creates the exceptional moment of breakthrough.

This was the real design question:

Not how many pieces can I add, but how many distinct responsibilities the board can meaningfully support.

The answer had to be limited, but broad enough to create contrast.

The warband needs a central figure, because the game is built around claim and survival.
It needs common bodies, because power requires protection and presence.
It needs contact fighters, because the center must be contested directly.
It needs faster raiding pieces, because the board should allow sudden pressure and line-breaking.
It needs ranged control, because open space should matter.
And it needs one more prestigious or exceptional role, because not every act of force should feel ordinary.

This is where the set of figures begins to emerge.

Not yet as exact numbers.
Not yet as final movement rules.
But as a spectrum of roles.

The point is to create enough difference that each figure has a reason to exist, while keeping the group small enough that the board can still breathe. The pieces should not overwhelm the hexagon. They should activate it.

The count, eventually, will be a matter of balance.
But the roles come first.

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The Knyaz: The Claim

(Kniaź / Knez / Chieftain / Pretendent / Leader)

The Knyaz is the most important figure in the game, but not the strongest fighter.

This was essential from the beginning. If the leader were also the most powerful combat piece, the whole design would become too simple. The player would just push the strongest figure toward the center and use force to justify authority.

Instead, the Knyaz is slow, exposed, and dependent on the group around him.

He matters because he is the one who can claim the Throne. The first among the equals that choose him. He turns movement into ambition. He gives the warband its direction. Without him, the other pieces are only a force. With him, they become a claim.

This makes the Knyaz a political piece more than a combat piece.

He is necessary, but vulnerable.
Prestigious, but not self-sufficient.
Central, but unable to reach the center safely without support.

That is the first principle of the set: the most important piece should need the others.

The Footman / Shield-Bearer: The Body

(Piechur / Tarczownik)

The Footman is the most numerous piece because every claim needs bodies around it.

He is simple by design. He moves slowly, fights directly, blocks space, and protects more valuable figures. His strength does not come from individual brilliance. It comes from presence.

This is why I often think of him as a Shield-Bearer.

The shield gives the piece a clear visual and tactical identity. It stands between danger and value. It protects against distance. It makes the board harder to pass through. It reminds the player that power does not survive only because someone claims it. It survives because others stand around it.

The Footman is not glamorous, but he is structurally important.

He holds space.
He blocks shots.
He protects the Knyaz.
He slows down enemy pressure.
He gives the warband mass.

In many games, the simplest piece is treated as disposable. Here, I want the player to feel that the Footman is basic, but not meaningless.

The Warrior: Contact

(Woj / Wojownik / Miecznik / Drużynnik / Zbrojny)

The Warrior is the main fighting piece.

If the Footman holds space, the Warrior contests it. He is the figure that enters the crowded center and makes direct contact dangerous. He should be easy to understand: a reliable combat unit, flexible enough to maneuver in tight formations, but not filled with special exceptions.

This piece exists because the game needs a stable contact fighter.

Not every piece can be strange. Not every piece can be elite. Some part of the warband has to carry the ordinary work of fighting: removing threats, protecting the center, opening space, and punishing overextension.

The Warrior is not necessarily the most historically literal figure. He may suggest the sword-bearing fighter in modern imagination, but his real function is broader than that. He is the close-combat core of the warband.

He represents pressure.

The Skirmisher: The Raid

(Harcownik / Siekiernik / Topornik / Rajdowiec )

The Skirmisher exists to create a different rhythm.

Where the Warrior bends and adapts in the center, the Skirmisher commits to a line. He is faster, sharper, and less stable. His identity comes from the raid: sudden movement, a clean path, a strike through an opening.

This piece keeps something of the hunting instinct inside the warband.

He reads the line.
He uses timing.
He punishes exposure.
He does not fight like the Warrior.

This distinction is important. The Warrior and Skirmisher may both be combat pieces, but they should not ask the same question.

The Warrior asks: how do I fight inside the crowd?
The Skirmisher asks: where is the line I can break?

That gives the set more texture. The player is not choosing between stronger and weaker versions of the same idea. The player is choosing between different geometries of aggression.

The Archer: Distance

(Strzelec / Łucznik)

The Archer changes how the board feels.

Without ranged pressure, danger is mostly local. You fear what stands next to you, or what can reach you in the next move. With the Archer, open space becomes meaningful. A clear line is no longer empty. It is a threat waiting to happen.

The Archer should not dominate the game, but he should make players cautious.

He controls distance.
He punishes careless placement.
He makes shields matter.
He forces players to think about lines, not only clusters.

This is also why his power must be conditional. If every shot were easy, the Archer would become oppressive. He needs a clean line. He needs protection. He should be dangerous when placed well and limited when the board closes around him.

The Archer gives the game a second layer of pressure: not only who can reach you, but who can see you.

The Banner: Breakthrough and Prestige

(Chorągiew / Chorąży / Włócznik / Oszczepnik)

The Banner is the most exceptional piece below the Knyaz.

Mechanically, it is a breakthrough figure. It moves in a line, jumps, strikes, and can change the shape of the board when used at the right moment. Symbolically, it gives the warband a point of prestige that is not identical to rulership.

I like the word “Banner” because it is not only a weapon-image.

A banner gathers attention. It marks identity. It shows where force is concentrating. It belongs to movement, morale, and visibility. It is something the group can orient around.

That makes the figure feel different from simply “elite swordsman” or “heavy warrior.”

The Banner should feel dramatic, but not universal. Its power comes from direction. It needs an axis. It can break through a position, but it cannot solve every problem. This keeps it special without letting it replace the other figures.

There is only one Banner per player because this kind of force should feel rare.

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The Set as a Warband

At this point, the pieces begin to form a small social structure.

The Knyaz claims.
The Footman protects.
The Warrior contests.
The Skirmisher raids.
The Archer controls distance.
The Banner breaks through.

That is the whole warband in miniature.

Each piece has a role before it has a detailed rule. This is important to me. The rules should be simple enough to learn, but the role should be strong enough that the player remembers why the piece exists.

The game does not need every figure to have a long list of special abilities. The depth should come from how they interact: who blocks whom, who opens the path, who protects the Knyaz, who threatens the center, who benefits when two other players weaken each other.

This is especially important because the same set must work across different player counts.

In a duel, the pieces create a focused confrontation.
With three players, every attack risks helping the third.
With four players, geography starts to create natural neighbors and fronts.
With six players, the board becomes a field of constant pressure, opportunity, and consequence.

The pieces therefore cannot be too complicated individually. The situation around them will already become complex.

That is one of the main lessons of the design so far: if the board creates enough tension, the pieces do not need to carry all the complexity by themselves.

The Warrior may carry some of the modern sword-image, but he is not only a swordsman.
The Skirmisher may suggest an axe, spear, or raiding weapon, but he is not only an axeman.
The Footman is defined more by shield and position than by personal glory.
The Archer is defined by distance.
The Banner is defined by prestige and breakthrough.
The Knyaz is defined by claim.

This approach gives the game room to breathe. It can acknowledge history without becoming trapped by reconstruction. It can use familiar images without becoming flat fantasy.

From Roles to Rules

This article is not yet the full ruleset.

The goal here is to show how the figures emerged: not as historical reconstructions, not as fantasy classes, and not as pure geometry, but as roles inside a symbolic warband.

The next step is more practical.

How far does each figure move?
Can it turn?
Can it jump?
Can it shoot?
Can it capture after moving?
Can it protect the Knyaz?
Can it clear the path to the Throne?

Those questions lead directly into the actual mechanics of the game.

But before the exact movement rules, I needed this layer: a reason for the figures to exist at all.

The Knyaz needed a warband.
The warband needed contrast.
The board needed space.
The Throne needed pressure.
And the player needed pieces that were simple enough to move, but meaningful enough to remember.

That is where the current set begins.

At first, this may sound like a strange order of work. In an abstract strategy game, one might expect the pieces to come first: movement, capture, range, balance, then maybe a theme added on top. But for this project, the board itself had already suggested something more specific.

A hexagonal board is not neutral. It does not naturally point toward two armies facing each other across a single front. It suggests several directions at once. It suggests pressure from the side, unstable alliances, shared centers, and conflicts that are not always reducible to one clean opposition.

That mattered to me from the beginning.

I did not want to simply design “chess on hexes.” Chess is one of the great abstract games, and its clarity is part of its power. But it is also built around a very particular symbolic structure: two sides, two kings, two armies, one direct opposition. That structure creates enormous intellectual depth, but it also narrows the world into a duel.

I wanted something slightly different.

I wanted a game that could still contain the intensity of a duel, but not be limited by it. A game where two players could face each other directly, but where the same system could also expand into three, four, or six competing powers. A game where conflict would not only mean destroying the enemy, but also knowing when another player’s war creates an opening for you.

In that sense, the hexagonal board was not just a geometric choice. It was a philosophical one.

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The problem with two kings

There is something beautiful about the simplicity of two kings.

It gives the game a clean emotional frame. One side against another. One mind against another. One order against another. But real political and historical life rarely works in such a clean way.

Even when wars are fought between two powers, the consequences are almost never limited to those two powers. Neighbors watch. Rivals wait. Allies calculate. A weakening enemy may become useful. A costly victory may make the winner vulnerable. A war between two sides may create the best conditions for a third.

This is one of the things I wanted the game to express abstractly.

Not through diplomacy rules, hidden cards, negotiation phases, or narrative events, but through the board itself. Through the number of possible players. Through spatial pressure. Through the fact that every move may open or close possibilities for someone who is not directly involved in the immediate exchange.

With three players, every capture has a shadow.
With four, geography begins to create natural fronts.
With six, every local conflict risks becoming an invitation.

This does not make the game more “realistic” in a simulationist sense. That was never the goal. It makes the game feel closer to the instability of human conflict: not one line, but several forces pulling at once.

Why the center matters

Once the game moved away from a simple two-sided structure, it needed a different kind of objective.

If the goal were only to eliminate the enemy leader, the game would remain too close to a classical duel. It would still be about removing the opposite king. But on a board with several possible powers, I wanted the objective to be something more public, more exposed, and more symbolically charged.

That is how the Throne became central.

The Throne is not owned at the beginning. It does not belong to any player by default. It is not the private property of one royal line. It sits in the middle as a claim, a temptation, and a danger.

To stand on the Throne is to say: I am no longer only defending my group. I am trying to rise above the others.

That creates a different kind of tension. The player who moves toward the center becomes visible. The leader who reaches the Throne becomes powerful, but also vulnerable. Victory requires not only arrival, but endurance. The claim must be held long enough for the rest of the board to react.

This was important to me because I did not want power to feel automatic.

A ruler does not exist in isolation. A ruler exists because others accept him, fear him, need him, follow him, fail to stop him, or are too divided to resist him. The Throne in the game is a simplified version of that idea. It is not enough to want authority. You have to survive the moment when that desire becomes visible.

Why the leader is a Knyaz

The central figure of the game became the Knyaz.

The word itself was part of the attraction. In English, it is usually rendered somewhere around “prince,” “duke,” or sometimes “king,” depending on historical context. Historically, the Slavic title changed meaning over time: it could refer to a tribal chieftain, a ruler, or later a noble title within more developed state structures.

That ambiguity is exactly what I like about it.

“Knyaz” does not feel identical to “king.” It carries royalty, but not necessarily the full weight of an already completed monarchy. It suggests someone on the edge between leadership and sovereignty. Someone who may command a warband, rule a people, or aspire to something greater — but who is still not simply born into unquestioned sacred authority.

For this game, that distinction matters.

The Knyaz is not a divine king placed above the world. He is a claimant. A leader. A figure whose importance comes from what he might become. He is not powerful because heaven has already settled the matter. He is powerful because the board has not.

That makes him ideal for a game about competing claims.

Each player does not begin as the rightful monarch of the world. Each begins with a group, a position, and a possibility. The Throne is the thing they are moving toward. Authority is not assumed; it is contested.

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Slavic influence without turning the game into a history lesson

The Slavic influence in the game is not meant to turn it into a direct historical reconstruction.

This is not a simulation of one tribe, one century, one war, or one political system. It is still an abstract strategy game. But abstract games can carry cultural memory in their structure, names, and metaphors.

What interested me was the tension between community and leadership.

Early Slavic societies are often described as decentralized tribal societies, with gradual consolidation, chiefdoms, and later more centralized political forms developing over time. The historical picture is complex and varies by region, but the general movement from looser tribal structures toward stronger centers of power is important.

There is also the tradition of assemblies. The veche, for example, was a popular assembly known especially from medieval Rus’ contexts. Britannica describes it as a characteristic institution from roughly the 10th to 15th centuries, probably rooted in earlier deliberative bodies among Slavic tribes, and in some towns sharing power with princes and aristocratic councils.

I do not want to overstate this or romanticize it. No early society was a modern democracy. No culture was purely egalitarian. Power, hierarchy, violence, prestige, wealth, and family position existed everywhere in different forms.

But there is a useful design idea here: leadership does not always begin as permanent monarchy. Sometimes it emerges from need. War requires coordination. Defense requires command. A group may choose or tolerate a leader in crisis, then resist the same leader if he tries to turn temporary command into lasting superiority.

That tension became one of the hidden foundations of the game.

The Knyaz is necessary.
The Knyaz is dangerous.
The Knyaz protects the group.
The Knyaz also tries to rise above it.

This is much more interesting to me than a king who is simply king because the game says so.

This is not meant to be a historical reconstruction of Slavic warfare or society. It is a symbolic design language. The game takes inspiration from certain historical tensions — leadership, community, prestige, claim, and conflict — and translates them into abstract pieces on a board.

The warband before the kingdom

This is also why I think of the player’s forces less as a formal army and more as a warband. There is no place on eartg where we could find kingdom before the people.

A kingdom feels complete. A warband feels like something still forming. It has hierarchy, but not yet bureaucracy. It has loyalty, but not yet the full machinery of state. It is personal, dangerous, unstable.

That scale fits the game better.

The pieces are not anonymous soldiers of a fully established empire. They are the people around a claimant: fighters, shield-bearers, archers, raiders, elite figures, and the leader at the center of their loyalty. They do not represent an entire civilization. They represent the moment before authority hardens into institution.

This also helps explain the tone I want. The game should feel elevated, but not detached from human struggle. It should have the symbolic weight of crowns, thrones, and sovereignty, but still remain close to the ground: movement, protection, ambush, sacrifice, pressure.

The Throne gives the game height.
The warband keeps it human.

Why not a hunt?

At an earlier stage, I considered a different center for the board.

Instead of a Throne, the middle could have represented prey, treasure, a sacred animal, or something closer to a hunt. That would also make sense in a more primal or communal vision of the game. A group moving toward the center to secure food, glory, or survival has its own strength as an image.

But eventually that felt too low for the kind of tension I wanted.

The hunt is older than the crown. In practical terms, it may even be more important. A human group needs food before it needs royal symbols. But games do not work only through practical importance. They also work through myth, prestige, and the emotional charge of a goal.

The Throne does something that prey does not.

It transforms the center into an idea.

The player is not only trying to take something valuable. He is trying to claim a position above the others. That makes the act more dangerous and more ironic. Everyone may need leadership, but everyone may also fear the one who succeeds too much.

That is why the Throne stayed.

A different answer to chess

Chess entered Europe through a long transformation from earlier games such as chaturanga and shatranj; chaturanga is generally treated as an early Indian ancestor of chess and related Asian chess traditions, with pieces connected to military divisions such as infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots.

In that tradition, the board is a battlefield and the king is the decisive figure. My game obviously stands in conversation with that lineage. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

But I am trying to answer a slightly different question.

Not: how can two royal armies destroy each other?

Rather: what happens when several leaders, each backed by their own group, attempt to turn a shared center into personal authority?

That shift changes the meaning of the board.

The game can still be played one against one. In that mode, it keeps something of the classical duel. But it is not limited to that form. The same board can become a triangle of suspicion, a four-sided struggle, or a six-sided field of unstable pressure.

That is why the hexagon matters. It allows the game to preserve the elegance of abstraction while opening the political imagination beyond the binary.

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The design principle underneath it all

The practical design principle is simple:

The game should be abstract, but not empty.

I do not want to cover the rules with lore. I do not want every piece to require a paragraph of mythology before the player understands it. But I also do not want the game to feel like pure geometry with decorative names attached at the end.

The names, the board, the Throne, and the pieces should all point in the same direction.

The Knyaz is slow because authority must be carried and protected.
The Throne is central because legitimacy is public.
The hexagon matters because conflict has more than one front.
The warband matters because power begins among people before it becomes a state.
The rules must remain simple because the complexity should emerge from position, not from exception.

That is the foundation I needed before designing the pieces themselves.

Only after that could I ask what each figure should do.

Who protects the Knyaz?
Who breaks the line?
Who controls distance?
Who holds space?
Who creates sudden pressure?
Who makes the center survivable?

Those questions lead naturally into the next layer of the project: the pieces, their movement, and their roles inside the warband.

But before the pieces, there had to be a claim.

And before the claim, there had to be a Throne.

With that foundation in place, the next question became much more practical: if the game is about a Knyaz, a Throne, and a warband moving through contested space, what kinds of figures should this warband actually contain?

In my case, this is not a side issue. It directly affects everything: piece movement, balance, interface, future application design, debugging, and whether the whole system ends up elegant or starts collapsing under unnecessary complexity. Because of that, the coordinate system is not a technical choice sitting somewhere on the edge of the project. It is one of its structural foundations.

There was also a deeper ambition behind the board from the start. I was not trying to recreate chess in another geometric costume. The goal was larger than that. I wanted to see whether it was possible to design an abstract strategy system that retained the intensity of a duel between two minds, while also allowing that structure to expand into larger confrontations.

That is why the number of potential players matters so much here. The board was imagined not only for 2-player play, but for 3, 4, and 6 as well. Those numbers preserve the internal symmetry of the space. Five players, on the other hand, would break that balance: two players positioned at the extremes would inherit more space and therefore an unfair structural advantage.

Once that becomes part of the design goal, the board stops being just a visual choice. It becomes an engine of fairness. From that point on, the problem of coordinates is no longer a secondary technical question, but part of the core architecture of the game.

1. The starting point: not a modern board game, but an abstract strategy game

This project is not heading toward a contemporary board game in the modern hobby sense. It is not a eurogame, not an event-driven system, not a card engine, and not a narrative framework. It is much closer to the tradition of abstract strategy games: games in which the central relationship is between space, movement, and positional advantage. In that sense, it sits much closer to chess, go, and other games built around transparent rules and deep strategic possibility than to what people usually mean today when they say “board game.”

That distinction matters a great deal. In a modern board game, certain imperfections in the spatial system can sometimes be hidden beneath other layers: economy, cards, faction asymmetry, or narrative structure. In an abstract game, there is nowhere to hide. If the movement and spatial logic are not clean, the player will feel it immediately. And the computer, which will eventually have to operate the system, will feel it even faster.

2. The board shape: why this particular board forces certain decisions

The chosen board is a regular hexagon with side length 9 cells. This means that from the center to any corner there are 8 steps, and the whole board contains 217 cells.

That number can be derived quite simply. The board consists of a central cell and then successive rings around it. The first ring has 6 cells, the second 12, the third 18, and so on. For radius 8, that gives:

Since

the total number of cells is:

The same result can be expressed through the standard large-hexagon formula:

where n is the side length in cells. For n = 9:

This is not mathematical trivia for its own sake. That number immediately tells us the scale of the state space we are dealing with. 217 cells is large enough to support meaningful strategic depth, but still compact enough to make neighborhood logic, movement lines, center control, and entry zones manageable and analyzable.

On this board, seven cells are special:

• one central cell, which acts as the axis of the board and the key point of contention,

• six corner cells, which function as starting positions.

That structure is crucial. This is not a board designed for a classical two-sided game with one axis pointing “forward” and another “backward.” It is a board built on six-directional symmetry, which means that any coordinate system that privileges one direction over the others will, by definition, work against the design.

3. What hexagonal chess teaches us — and what should not be copied directly

Hexagonal chess is a useful reference point because it shows that games on hex grids have long had to deal with the same core problem: how to preserve meaningful movement and notation when each cell has six neighbors instead of four, and when the board itself may be oriented in different ways. In classical hexagonal chess variants, important factors include six-adjacency, three-color cell patterns, the altered behavior of linear pieces, and the fact that board orientation changes even the idea of “forward” movement, especially for pawns. Some variants use file-and-rank notation, and some also use numerical notation.

That context is valuable for two reasons. First, it shows that hexagonal notation is never neutral: it always emerges from the geometry of the board and the nature of the game. Second, it demonstrates that what works for a hexagonal version of orthodox chess does not automatically work for a different game built on a different core.

My board does not present the problem of translating classical chess into hexagonal form. The real problem is to build a clean coordinate model for a board symmetrical around a central objective, with six corner starting points and a movement system that is still being refined. So instead of asking “how do hexagonal chess variants name their cells?”, the better question becomes: which system interferes least with what this board already is?

4. The three main approaches: offset, cube, and axial

In practice, there are three main ways to think about hex grids.

4.1. Offset: superficially simple, practically awkward

The first approach is to think in terms of rows and columns with shifts — essentially treating the board as a modified 2D table. This is tempting because it feels familiar. At first glance, the board looks like something close to a rectangular grid, just slightly staggered.

The problem is that this simplicity is deceptive.

In offset systems, neighbors are not described uniformly. Their positions depend on whether a row or column is even or odd. That means special-case logic in code, separate lookup patterns, and generally less elegant geometry. For a board whose actual shape is a true hexagon rather than a rectangle, that becomes an unnecessary source of friction.

This matters greatly here. Our board is not rectangular. It is hexagonal. So choosing offset would mean building the game’s core logic around a structure that the board itself does not naturally have.

4.2. Cube: mathematically ideal, somewhat heavier in practice

The second option is the cube system, using three coordinates (q,r,s), bound by the condition:

This model is mathematically very elegant. Every movement direction becomes a simple vector, distance calculations are natural, rotations are clean, and the six-directional symmetry of the board becomes explicit.

The weakness of cube is not that it is bad. On the contrary, it is excellent. The issue is that, for storage, it keeps one number more than necessary. Since q+r+s = 0 is always true, one coordinate is always redundant.

4.3. Axial: the best compromise between rigor and usability

This is why the best solution ends up being the axial system. In axial coordinates we store only two values, usually (q,r), and compute the third only when needed:

This is not a poorer version of cube. It is a practical implementation of the same geometry. It keeps the computational advantages of cube — easy vector arithmetic, simple neighbors, straightforward distance, clean rotation logic — without storing unnecessary data.

This is the point where the project stops being an abstract debate about possible notations and starts becoming a concrete system.

5. The design decision: the center as (0,0)

Because the board is organized around one most important cell, the cleanest possible decision is to place the origin of the coordinate system exactly there. So:

becomes the central objective cell.

This has several advantages at once.

First, the most important point in the entire game also becomes the zero point of the mathematical system. That is elegant, but also highly practical.

Second, all distances from the center become natural. Nothing needs to be shifted or translated.

Third, the six corner positions form a perfectly symmetrical arrangement:

Each of these cells lies exactly eight steps from the center. This means the starting conditions are geometrically fair from the outset. If the game is meant to treat all six directions equally, it is hard to imagine a cleaner foundation.

6. When a cell “exists”: the key board rule

One of the greatest advantages of axial/cube over offset is the simplicity of determining whether a coordinate belongs to the board at all. For a board of radius 8, we define:

Then a cell belongs to the board if and only if:

or, equivalently:

This is one of those formulas that changes everything. Instead of manually describing how many cells each row has, where each row begins, and where it ends, we have one clean condition. It is easy to write in code, easy to understand, and it removes an entire class of boundary errors.

7. Neighbors: the six fundamental movement directions

On hex grids, the fundamental spatial relation has six directions rather than four. For axial (q,r) in a pointy-top orientation — exactly the orientation used by this board — we can define the six neighbor vectors as:

That means from any cell (q,r), the six adjacent cells are:

This is precisely where the superiority of axial over offset becomes obvious. There is no “if the row is even, do this; if odd, do that.” Neighbor logic is the same everywhere on the board.

From the perspective of movement design, that is invaluable. If later a piece moves one cell, two cells, along a line, into a ring of control, or through a special directional rule, the entire movement system rests on a consistent geometric base.

8. Distance: the most important strategic function

In any abstract strategy game, distance is one of the key ideas. It defines tempo to the center, effective control, mobility, and the positional value of a location.

For axial coordinates, the most convenient way to compute distance is through cube logic. Since:

for two cells For two cells A = (q₁, r₁) and B = (q₂, r₂), we define:

Then the hex distance is:

which becomes:

In practical terms, that means something very important: distance on the board stops being a vague visual intuition and becomes a function.

That function can then be used everywhere:

• to define movement range,

• to measure access to the center,

• to build AI heuristics,

• to evaluate positions,

• to design victory conditions,

• to create mechanics based on “the closer to the center, the more…”

For visual or animation purposes, one may also use Euclidean distance in axial space. That can be useful for screen effects or measuring purely geometric closeness independent of legal step count, but it does not replace hex distance as the metric for actual movement.

9. Why we rejected letter-based notation

In some forms of hexagonal chess, notation resembles standard chess: letters for files, numbers for ranks, sometimes accompanied by an additional numerical system. This works well for games that remain deeply rooted in chess tradition: two sides, clearly distinguished forward directions, established notation habits, and so on.

But this board functions differently. Here, the center matters more than “top” and “bottom,” and the six corners matter more than two opposing fronts. Because of that, letter-number notation, while readable, would introduce an unnecessary conceptual pull toward a classical two-sided board.

A pure numerical notation (q,r) is more austere, but also more honest. It reflects the actual geometry of the project without pretending to be more chess-like than it needs to be.

That was one of the more important decisions: not to stylize the game as chess any more than necessary.

10. How to name cells for humans and for software

In the end, the system separates into two layers.

Layer 1: program logic

The program operates only on:

The third coordinate remains implicit:

This is the true system. All operations, movements, distances, neighbors, boundary checks, lines, and any future board transformations should be handled here.

Layer 2: presentation

For the human-facing layer, the exact same notation can be shown directly:

with no letters added. That keeps everything consistent between the board, the code, and the design process. If a player or designer sees the cell “3,-2,” that is exactly the same cell the engine knows as “3,-2.”

It may not be the most “chess-like” solution, but it has one major advantage: there is no translation layer between the language of the board and the language of the implementation.

11. How to label the axes on a physical board

For a digital working board, it makes perfect sense to print (q,r) directly on every cell. This speeds up testing, improves design discussions, and prevents ambiguity.

For a physical board — especially if a wooden version is envisioned later — a cleaner solution may be preferable: label only the axes along the edges.

That way:

• the cells remain visually clean,

• the board feels more elegant,

• and yet it is still easy to locate a line of constant q or constant r.

This is both aesthetically stronger and fully compatible with the axial system. In practice, it means that values from −8 to 8 are marked along the board edges for the two visible axes, while full (q,r) notation remains available in design materials, test diagrams, and the digital interface.

12. How the math becomes an application

The greatest strength of this whole approach is that it moves seamlessly from paper to code.

In the application, there is no need to draw a board image and then guess where each cell is. The board can be generated directly from the coordinate logic:

• iterate through all (q,r) pairs in the range −8 to 8,

• keep only those that satisfy

• compute screen positions for every valid cell.

For a pointy-top orientation, the screen mapping can be expressed as:

This matters because the interactive version of the board is not a visual trick. It is already the first real embodiment of the system. The hexagons are not just shapes in an image; they are objects generated from their own coordinates. Once that is true, adding the next layers becomes straightforward:

• hover behavior,

• click selection,

• highlighting,

• pieces,

• legal move previews,

• turn logic,

• save states,

• even future position analysis.

13. What this system gives the project as a whole

Choosing axial (q,r) is not just mathematically elegant. It produces very concrete design advantages.

First, it guarantees symmetry. All six directions are treated equally. That is vital on a board with six corner starting positions.

Second, it creates clarity. When testing movement mechanics, every piece can be described either as a set of vectors or as a rule operating along lines.

Third, it offers scalability. If the board size ever changes, many rules remain identical; only the radius parameter changes.

Fourth, it creates a clear bridge between design and code. This is especially important when the designer is not yet a programmer. A good spatial model makes it much easier to work with AI, collaborate with a developer, or gradually learn implementation without drowning in special cases.

Fifth, it provides a natural basis for AI and heuristics. Everything the computer will later need to evaluate can be reduced to clean questions:

• how far is this cell from the center?

• how many neighbors does it have?

• is a piece standing on a line leading toward the central objective?

• how many steps separate it from an opponent’s corner?

• does a move preserve control over a sector of the board?

Without a coherent coordinate system, those questions would turn into a pile of exceptions. With axial, they become ordinary calculations.

14. The central conclusion

The main conclusion of the entire process is simple: this board chooses axial by itself.

Not because axial is fashionable. Not because tutorials recommend it. Not because someone else used it elsewhere. But because:

• the board is a regular hexagon,

• the center is the most important cell,

• the six corners carry equal structural weight,

• the design requires full directional symmetry,

• and the future program will need to calculate movement, distance, adjacency, and position without unnecessary exceptions.

Hexagonal chess as a broader tradition shows how different notational systems can emerge depending on board shape and design assumptions. It also shows how strongly geometry affects movement logic. But this particular project leads to its own conclusion.

The final set of design assumptions is therefore:

It is a stable foundation on which the next stages of the project can be built: movement rules, victory conditions, interface logic, game-state representation, and the first real fragments of the application.

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Below I am attaching the HTML code which, when opened in a browser, will display an interactive version of the board with visible coordinates.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
  <title>Interactive Hexagonal Board</title>
  <style>
    :root {
      --bg: #111111;
      --panel: rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.88);
      --panel-border: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.12);
      --text: #f3eadf;
      --muted: #d2c3b4;
      --outline: #5f3a18;
      --light: #caa57f;
      --mid: #9a744a;
      --dark: #805428;
      --accent: #5c2d08;
      --hover: #e6d0b6;
    }

    * { box-sizing: border-box; }

    body {
      margin: 0;
      background: var(--bg);
      color: var(--text);
      font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
      overflow: hidden;
    }

    #app {
      width: 100vw;
      height: 100vh;
      position: relative;
    }

    svg {
      width: 100%;
      height: 100%;
      display: block;
    }

    .hex {
      stroke: var(--outline);
      stroke-width: 1.8;
      cursor: pointer;
      transition: filter 0.12s ease, stroke-width 0.12s ease;
    }

    .hex:hover {
      filter: brightness(1.12);
      stroke-width: 2.4;
    }

    .hex.is-hovered {
      filter: brightness(1.18);
      stroke: var(--hover);
      stroke-width: 3;
    }

    .hud {
      position: absolute;
      right: 18px;
      bottom: 18px;
      background: var(--panel);
      border: 1px solid var(--panel-border);
      border-radius: 14px;
      padding: 14px 16px;
      min-width: 200px;
      backdrop-filter: blur(8px);
      box-shadow: 0 8px 28px rgba(0,0,0,0.35);
      pointer-events: none;
    }

    .hud .label {
      font-size: 13px;
      color: var(--muted);
      margin-bottom: 6px;
      letter-spacing: 0.03em;
      text-transform: uppercase;
    }

    .hud .value {
      font-size: 28px;
      font-weight: 700;
      line-height: 1.1;
    }

    .legend {
      position: absolute;
      left: 18px;
      top: 18px;
      background: var(--panel);
      border: 1px solid var(--panel-border);
      border-radius: 14px;
      padding: 12px 14px;
      max-width: 340px;
      backdrop-filter: blur(8px);
      box-shadow: 0 8px 28px rgba(0,0,0,0.35);
      font-size: 14px;
      line-height: 1.45;
    }

    .legend strong {
      display: block;
      margin-bottom: 6px;
      font-size: 16px;
    }

    .legend code {
      background: rgba(255,255,255,0.08);
      padding: 1px 5px;
      border-radius: 6px;
    }

    .center-dot {
      pointer-events: none;
      fill: rgba(255,255,255,0.22);
    }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
  <div id="app">
    <div class="legend">
      <strong>Interactive Board</strong>
      This version uses the same axial coordinates <code>q,r</code>, but the board is rendered in the visual orientation matching the reference image:
      one corner at the top, one at the bottom, and one on each side.
    </div>

    <div class="hud">
      <div class="label">Current cell</div>
      <div class="value" id="coord-readout">—</div>
    </div>

    <svg id="board" viewBox="0 0 1600 1400" aria-label="Hexagonal board"></svg>
  </div>

  <script>
    const R = 8;              // board radius, large hex side length = 9 cells
    const HEX_SIZE = 46;      // size of a single cell
    const ORIGIN_X = 800;     // board center in SVG
    const ORIGIN_Y = 700;

    const colors = {
      light: getCssVar('--light'),
      mid: getCssVar('--mid'),
      dark: getCssVar('--dark'),
      accent: getCssVar('--accent'),
      outline: getCssVar('--outline')
    };

    const startCells = new Set([
      key(0, -R),
      key(R, -R),
      key(R, 0),
      key(0, R),
      key(-R, R),
      key(-R, 0)
    ]);

    const svg = document.getElementById('board');
    const coordReadout = document.getElementById('coord-readout');
    let hoveredHex = null;

    function getCssVar(name) {
      return getComputedStyle(document.documentElement).getPropertyValue(name).trim();
    }

    function key(q, r) {
      return `${q},${r}`;
    }

    function isInsideBoard(q, r) {
      const s = -q - r;
      return Math.max(Math.abs(q), Math.abs(r), Math.abs(s)) <= R;
    }

    function cellFill(q, r) {
      if ((q === 0 && r === 0) || startCells.has(key(q, r))) {
        return colors.accent;
      }
      const idx = mod(q - r, 3);
      return [colors.light, colors.mid, colors.dark][idx];
    }

    function mod(n, m) {
      return ((n % m) + m) % m;
    }

    // Flat-top hex rendering.
    // Important: coordinates stay axial q,r.
    // Only the visual projection is changed so the board matches the reference image.
    function axialToPixel(q, r, size = HEX_SIZE) {
      const x = size * 1.5 * q;
      const y = size * Math.sqrt(3) * (r + q / 2);
      return { x: ORIGIN_X + x, y: ORIGIN_Y + y };
    }

    function hexPoints(cx, cy, size = HEX_SIZE) {
      const pts = [];
      for (let i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
        const angleDeg = 60 * i;   // flat-top orientation
        const angleRad = Math.PI / 180 * angleDeg;
        const x = cx + size * Math.cos(angleRad);
        const y = cy + size * Math.sin(angleRad);
        pts.push(`${x.toFixed(2)},${y.toFixed(2)}`);
      }
      return pts.join(' ');
    }

    function setHovered(hexElement, q, r) {
      if (hoveredHex) hoveredHex.classList.remove('is-hovered');
      hoveredHex = hexElement;
      if (hoveredHex) hoveredHex.classList.add('is-hovered');
      coordReadout.textContent = `${q}, ${r}`;
    }

    function clearHovered() {
      if (hoveredHex) hoveredHex.classList.remove('is-hovered');
      hoveredHex = null;
      coordReadout.textContent = '—';
    }

    function drawBoard() {
      svg.innerHTML = '';

      for (let q = -R; q <= R; q++) {
        for (let r = -R; r <= R; r++) {
          if (!isInsideBoard(q, r)) continue;

          const { x, y } = axialToPixel(q, r);

          const poly = document.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg', 'polygon');
          poly.setAttribute('points', hexPoints(x, y));
          poly.setAttribute('fill', cellFill(q, r));
          poly.setAttribute('class', 'hex');
          poly.dataset.q = q;
          poly.dataset.r = r;

          poly.addEventListener('mouseenter', () => setHovered(poly, q, r));
          poly.addEventListener('mousemove', () => setHovered(poly, q, r));
          poly.addEventListener('mouseleave', () => {
            poly.classList.remove('is-hovered');
            hoveredHex = null;
            coordReadout.textContent = '—';
          });

          svg.appendChild(poly);
        }
      }

      const center = document.createElementNS('http://www.w3.org/2000/svg', 'circle');
      center.setAttribute('cx', ORIGIN_X);
      center.setAttribute('cy', ORIGIN_Y);
      center.setAttribute('r', 6);
      center.setAttribute('class', 'center-dot');
      svg.appendChild(center);
    }

    drawBoard();

    svg.addEventListener('click', (event) => {
      const target = event.target;
      if (target && target.classList.contains('hex')) {
        const q = target.dataset.q;
        const r = target.dataset.r;
        console.log(`Clicked cell: ${q},${r}`);
      }
    });

    svg.addEventListener('mouseleave', clearHovered);
  </script>
</body>
</html>

This section will be dedicated to the development of Knyaz — a strategic board game built in the style of classical grid-based games, similar in form to chess or go, yet designed for a broader, more fluid kind of play.

It’s a system for multiple players — from two up to six — where every decision affects not only the opponent, but the balance of the entire field.
The structure is simple: a board, a set of figures, and clear movement — but what happens within that space is meant to be more dynamic, adaptive, and open to interpretation.

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Here, I will be sharing the process of creating the game — from the first conceptual sketches and mechanical drafts, through testing and refinements, to the thoughts and ideas that shape its direction.
It will be less about finished rules, and more about the reasoning behind them — how mechanics, structure, and symbolic ideas start to align into a coherent design.

This is only the starting point — a place to gather thoughts, outline possibilities, and trace how the system begins to grow.
There are no fixed answers yet, only movement.

Knyaz is only beginning.