Step-by-Step Tutorial
Fox & Geese is an asymmetric strategy game played on a cross-shaped board with 33 valid positions.
Player 1 controls a single Fox that starts in the center. Player 2 controls 13 Geese that start packed in the lower half of the board.
The Fox moves first. The two sides have very different goals and abilities.
The Fox can move one step in any direction: horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, to any adjacent empty position.
This gives the Fox up to 8 possible moves from most positions, making it very mobile.
In this example, the Fox at the center can move to any of the highlighted empty squares.
Each Goose can move one step forward (toward the top of the board), sideways, or diagonally forward to an adjacent empty position.
Geese cannot move backward or diagonally backward. This means they must advance carefully as a group.
The highlighted goose can move up, left, right, or diagonally forward-left and forward-right.
The Fox captures a Goose by jumping over it to the empty position directly beyond, in any of the 8 directions.
The jumped Goose is removed from the board. The Fox can perform multiple jumps in a single turn if further captures are available after each landing.
Here the Fox can jump over the Goose to the empty square beyond it.
If the Fox lands from a capture and can immediately jump another Goose, it must continue jumping in the same turn.
A multi-jump chain can capture several Geese in one turn, which is devastating for the Geese player.
In this position, the Fox can jump over the first Goose, then jump over the second Goose in the same turn.
The Geese win by surrounding and trapping the Fox so it has no legal moves. Since Geese cannot move backward, they must advance as a coordinated wall.
The Geese should maintain a solid line and push the Fox into a corner or against the edge of the board, cutting off all escape routes.
In this position, the Geese have cornered the Fox. The Fox has very few moves left.
The Fox wins if it captures enough Geese that fewer than 4 remain. With so few Geese, trapping the Fox becomes impossible.
The Fox should look for gaps in the Geese formation to break through or set up multi-jump captures.
In this position, the Fox has already captured many Geese and the remaining ones cannot form a trap.
The Fox wins when fewer than 4 Geese remain on the board. At that point, the Geese cannot form a trap.
In this position, only 3 Geese remain and the Fox is declared the winner.
The Geese win when the Fox has no legal moves. This happens when the Fox is completely surrounded.
In this position, every adjacent square around the Fox is occupied by a Goose. The Fox is trapped and the Geese win!
Play with 13, 15, or 17 geese. More geese make it harder for the fox to break through.
The standard game uses 13 geese. With 15 geese, two extra geese are added to the formation, giving the geese player more coverage. With 17 geese, the board starts even more packed, making it very difficult for the fox to find gaps.
More geese means:
- Denser formations that are harder to break through
- More pieces to coordinate but also more trapping power
- The fox must be even more creative to capture enough geese
In this example, the game is set up with 15 geese instead of the standard 13.
Allow geese to move left and right, not just forward. This gives geese more tactical options.
In the standard game, geese can only move forward (toward the top) and diagonally forward. With sideways movement enabled, geese can also slide left and right along a row.
This variant makes the geese significantly more flexible:
- Geese can reposition laterally to close gaps
- Flanking maneuvers become possible
- The fox has a harder time exploiting holes in the geese line
In this position, the highlighted goose can move forward, diagonally, or sideways.
Ready to play Fox & Geese?