Fox and Geese vs Computer

How to play Fox and Geese

Fox and Geese is one of Europe’s oldest board games — an asymmetric “hunt game” in which the two sides have completely different pieces, powers and goals. It belongs to the medieval tafl family of unequal-forces games played across Scandinavia, and a version called Halatafl (“the fox game”) is mentioned in Icelandic sagas as early as the 14th century. The game later spread through the whole of Europe, turning up in royal household accounts and remaining a favourite fireside game for centuries. One player controls a single red fox; the other marshals a flock of thirteen amber geese. The fox tries to eat geese by jumping over them; the geese cannot capture at all and instead try to crowd the fox into a corner until it cannot move a single step. Play a friend on the same screen, or take either side against the computer at three difficulty levels and earn ranking points for every win.

The goal

The two sides have opposite goals. The geese win by immobilising the fox: if, on the fox’s turn, it has no legal step and no legal jump anywhere, the hunt is over and the flock triumphs. The fox wins by eating geese until fewer than seven remain — six geese or fewer can no longer form the wall needed to trap it, so the game ends immediately at that point.

The board

The game is played on the traditional 33-point cross board — the same footprint as peg solitaire. Pieces stand on the points and move along the drawn lines. Every point is joined to its horizontal and vertical neighbours, and the classic diagonals connect every second point, so some points have up to eight exits while others have only four or fewer. Watch the line network carefully: a move — and just as importantly a jump — is only ever allowed along a drawn line.

Setup

The thirteen geese begin packed on one side of the cross: the entire bottom arm plus the complete seven-point row just below the centre. The fox starts alone on the centre point, surrounded but defiant. In this version the fox moves first, and the sides then alternate one move per turn.

Rules of play

• The fox and the geese alternate turns, one move each; the fox begins.
• A goose moves one point along a line to an empty neighbouring point, forward (toward the far arm) or sideways — never backward, neither straight nor diagonally. Geese can never capture anything.
• The fox moves one point along a line in any direction — forward, backward, sideways or along a diagonal — to an empty neighbouring point.
• The fox captures by jumping: if a goose stands on an adjacent point along a line and the point directly beyond it on that same line is empty, the fox leaps over the goose to the empty point and the goose is removed from the board.
• Jumps chain: if another jump is available from the landing point, the fox may keep jumping in the same turn — one long move can eat two, three or more geese.
• Captures are never compulsory. The fox may ignore an available jump, and may stop a jump chain after any hop. (Some traditional variants force the fox to jump — this version does not.)

How the game ends

The geese win the moment the fox, on its turn, has no legal move: every neighbouring point along a line is occupied and every potential jump is blocked by a piece on the landing point. The fox wins as soon as the flock is reduced to six geese, because six can no longer build a trap. One extra rule keeps the game well-defined: if the geese themselves ever have no legal move on their turn — every forward and sideways path blocked — the fox wins. The counters above the board always show how many geese survive and how many the fox has eaten.

Playing the computer (ranked)

In “Fox and Geese vs Computer” you pick your side — fox or geese — and one of three levels before the game starts. Easy makes deliberate mistakes so newcomers can win with either side. Normal looks ahead and punishes careless moves. Expert searches deeper: as the fox it hunts down double jumps, and as the geese it keeps the wall tight and rarely offers a free bird. The computer thinks entirely on your device, so the game works offline. Beat it to earn ranking points — Easy +10, Normal +30, Expert +100 — and sign in to put your best result on the leaderboard.

Strategy tips

• Geese: advance as an unbroken wall. Geese are strong shoulder to shoulder — move the flock up rank by rank and never let a lone goose stand one step ahead of its neighbours where the fox can pick it off.
• Geese: never expose a goose with an empty point behind it. Before each move, check every line through the fox; if your move places a goose beside the fox — or empties the point behind such a goose — it will be eaten. Geese cannot retreat, so every mistake is permanent.
• Geese: herd the fox toward an arm or a corner. You do not need to chase it, only to shrink its space — push the wall forward so the fox’s free area gets smaller every few moves, and seal the diagonal lines last, because those are its favourite escape routes.
• Fox: stay mobile and central for as long as possible. The centre of the cross has the most lines; a fox pinned in an arm early has half lost already. Step backward freely — the geese can never follow you back.
• Fox: do not grab every goose. A tempting single jump can pull you into a pocket that the flock then seals shut. Count the reply to every capture — it is the double and triple chains, and the jumps that break the front wall, that really win the hunt.
• Fox: attack the hinges of the wall. The geese are weakest at the moment a rank moves — watch for a goose stepping forward alone or a gap opening behind the line, then dart through. Every goose eaten makes the remaining net easier to tear.

Frequently asked questions