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Penturanga. Chaturanga on a board with 46 pentagonal cells. (8x5, Cells: 46) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jonathan wrote on Tue, Dec 4, 2007 12:08 AM UTC:
It does appear that this game visually lends itself to different kinds of
movements, even if it can be seen as an equivelent to a hexagonal board. 
For instance a rook piece may alternate between one and two paths to reach
a destination cell.

    _____
 / \     / \
| - \_-_/ X |
| - / - \   |
 \ /_____\ /

In the lame ASCII diagram I have just given, you can see how a rook on the
far left pentagon can take two routes to reach cell X (the hyphens
representing arrows outlining the two paths).  If I had the
patience to produce another set of pentagons, you could see how both paths
merge on X, but could then split and merge over and over again.  Though
this movement is equally possible on a hex grid, it is far more visually
appealing on Neatham's Pentagonal grid.  I think that it could even be
interesting to allow the rook to change which path it takes whenever
desired, making it a difficult piece to block.  I believe further
exploration of Penturanga's idea could be quite interesting

However...

Perhaps a better pentagonal grid would have been a more pure one in
nature, like the one shown here:

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/pent.htm

This grid only allows its pentagons to come in contact edge-to-edge five
times.  This may be the more pure grid that some here are seeking.