Introduction

Bilsang is the game portrayed in Mike Resnick's space opera novel called Starship: Pirates.

It is a two-player game that uses twenty pieces (ten light, ten dark). Both players use both types of pieces. One player is SAME while the other is DIFFERENT. Bilsang does not include a dedicated board; any flat surface may be used as a playing surface.

Object

The last player who is able to move wins the game.

Setup

The game begins with an empty playing surface.

Players, beginning with SAME, take turns placing pieces on the playing surface. Each piece after the first must be placed adjacent to a piece that has already been placed. Pieces will form intersecting orthogonal lines (there are no diagonal lines in this game). The picture below shows an example.

Play

A move is made by taking a piece from one end of a line of pieces (not the middle) and moving it to the other end of the line. All twenty pieces must remain contiguous at the end of a move.

SAME can move a piece if the two pieces at the ends of a line at the beginning of a move are the same colour. An example is shown below.

DIFFERENT can move a piece if the two pieces at the ends of a line at the beginning of a move are different colours. An example is shown below.