My wife and I are very evenly matched at Pente . This makes for some very good, though nerve wracking, series. For us the game hinges on creating your own patterns while spotting and disrupting your opponents developing patterns. As the game progresses and the number of pieces in play grows, analyzing these complex patterns can raise the temperature of our brains to the boiling point. Norns shares almost all of the same rules and goals as Pente .
Players seek to establish a string of five stones in a straight line on a large grid.
Stones are placed at the intersection points of the lines of the grid. You can capture your opponents stones by surrounding them with your own. But in this variant every other move is constrained to a limited number of intersections by a throw of two dice. This tends to wreak havoc with carefully laid plans. It also introduces an element of chaos or luck into the game.