Hex is an abstract with perhaps the simplest rules of any interesting board game. It's way cool that the site creators have found a way to implement it here within the context of war games. It's also commendable that they have added the pie rule, or some form of it anyway.

Perhaps I should explain what this rule is about. It's an opening protocol intended to make the game as fair as possible. Without some such protocol, the game is much less interesting, since the advantage of the first move is enough to win. After the very first stone is placed on the board the second player has the option, at that point in the game only, to swap sides. It's called the pie rule because it's like when two people share the last of the pie. One person cuts the pie into two slices and the other chooses which slice to eat.

There are two ways to do this on a server. For example if the players are black versus white, black places the first stone, then the other player may choose the black side. The player who placed the first stone as black is now white, and makes the next move. The other way is to remove the black stone from the board and place a white stone in the equivalent location for white. This equivalent location is in a mirror image cell, reflected along the long diagonal. See the diagram below. Black places a stone on A4, and white swaps it to D1.

But is that how this server does it? I haven't played here yet, but it looks as though black's A4 would turn into white's A4. That would give white a much weaker position than if white had a stone on D1. It's not equivalent to swapping sides.

Does anyone play Hex here?

Very interesting. I played hex once, and I believe black's a4 turns into white's a4.

Thanks for the feedback. I will post about this in the board designer's forum. I hope no one will regard this as spamming.

yes, Ycl is correct. it currently has the initial territory change possession.

other than adding some sort of factory condition that could take a turn to implement, it may not be fixable.  definitely bring it to the designer threads for more in depth discussion. 

In the meantime, while the swap method remains the way it is, here is a suggested policy for the second player.

If the first move is in an obtuse corner cell, swap it.

If the first move is anywhere else on the edge of the board, don't swap it.

If the first move is not on the edge, swap it.

Peyrol wrote:

In the meantime, while the swap method remains the way it is, here is a suggested policy for the second player.

If the first move is in an obtuse corner cell, swap it.

If the first move is anywhere else on the edge of the board, don't swap it.

If the first move is not on the edge, swap it.

I haven't put any thought into how to do it, but it might be easier to design it such that you don't offer the swap as a choice - simply force the options described above