Walkabout

Walkabout is a board game where you and one other player take turns placing and moving stacks of tiles to try and make a line connecting two sides of the 3x3 play area.

It's like tic-tac-toe in 3 dimensions. It's simple to learn, and more complex than it seems.

Rules

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Two players sit across the mat from one another and try to build a line connecting their side to the opponent's. Each player starts with 5 tiles of a single color. Take turns placing or walking tiles:

Placing

You can place a tile on an open X, or on top of any existing tile as long as the stack is less than 5 tiles tall.

Walking

Instead of placing a tile, you can "walk" a stack of tiles with your color on top.

To walk a stack, move the entire stack one space. Leave the bottom tile on that space, and move the rest another space. Keep going until the walking stack has 1 tile.

• You can walk a "stack" of 1 tile.
• You can't partially walk a stack.
• You can't walk a stack diagonally.
• You can't walk a stack in a way that makes any stack taller than 5 tiles.

End of Game

At the end of a turn, if there's a line of one player's tiles on top that connects the players' sides of the mat (not diagonally or across the middle), that player is the winner!

If a player can't walk or place any tiles, the other player is the winner.

Build a Set

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Follow these instructions to build your own Walkabout playset:

1. Find or make 10 game tiles. These should be one inch (25mm) across. 5 should be in one color, and 5 in a different color.

2. Cut a piece of flat material into a square, 5.5 inches (137mm) on a side to act as a playmat.

3. Measuring along one edge of the mat, draw temporary lines crossing the mat at 1", 2.75", and 4.5" (25mm, 70mm, and 114mm). Do the same for one adjacent side.

4. Mark an X at each point where the lines cross, and remove the temporary lines.

5. Decorate the rest of the playmat (optional)!

6. Download the rules from this page and print them out.

7. Put everything in a container and bring it to a coffee shop!

Tips

• The material you use for the playmat can be anything you can mark on. Paper is easy peasy, but it's fun to get fancy with it too! The playmat in the thumbnail is cut out from a scrap leather sample and decorated with ink stamps.
• For the tiles, anything that can easily stack can work. I highly recommend using something whose color can be seen from the side. Try poker chips, tiles from other board games, cheap plastic discs, flat beads, or colored foam core. The tiles in the thumbnail are wooden times-table learning blocks.
• The measurements above are provided for tiles that are 1 inch across. If you use bigger tiles, scale up the measurements proportionally and make sure there's enough margin between the X's to pick up stacks when there are tiles in the adjacent spaces.
• Your carrying container might be an old loose-leaf tea container, a mint tin, or a small drawstring bag.
• You can find a lot of these things in hobby shops. Even better, see if there's a creative reuse center near you!