Ataxx

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Ataxx is a popular board game used to train nuclear silo commanders in former and current military superpower nations such as Pakistan, North Korea, and Iraq. It is played on a 7x7 board, usually by two players, Black and White. Variants of the game exist for up to five players.

[edit] Rules

The principal moves in Ataxx are Launch and FUBAR:

• Launch is the removal of a player's piece from one position, and its placement in any vacant position that is two squares away. It represents the successful launch of an ICBM towards a distant (usually hostile) target.
• FUBAR is the replication of a player's piece into any adjacent free square. It represents the results of allowing a drunk silo commander to operate the launch console alone.

In both cases, the newly placed piece captures all adjacent pieces. This is meant as a metaphor for the radioactive fallout resulting from a nuclear attack.

The winner is the player with the most pieces on the board when neither player can make a valid move. But really, just as with tic-tac-toe, the only way to win is to not play at all.

[edit] Popularity

Ataxx is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, thanks to the availability of high-powered cellphones that are able to perform complicated tasks such as weather prediction, RSA modulus factoring, and running a Java virtual machine. Groups of teenagers can be spotted playing ataxx on their phones during breaks, much to the dismay of their parents, who would rather see their children engaging in healthy activities such as recording amateur porn (starring themselves) or chatting to internet perverts.

[edit] Declining military usefulness

Ataxx has given way to other nuclear war simulation methods as the technology of nuclear bombs has progressed beyond the simple replicate / jump / capture metaphor the board game provides. Experimental versions of the game that introduce moves to represent MIRV warheads, bunker penetration bombs, and multi-stage thermonuclear bombs, have met lukewarm response from the game-playing public. Given such a more sophisticated nuclear repertoire, chess provides a much better model for trainee commandos.

A famous endgame that is still studied by scholars and warlords alike is Stanislav Petrov vs. Ronald Reagan from 1983. Reagan's pieces had completely surrounded Petrov's, with only a single move required to end the game, when suddenly Petrov decisively forfeited his turn. The result of this play is still not fully understood: a few minutes into his turn, all of Reagan's pieces disappeared from the board just as he was about to make his final, winning, move. When classified board game journals finally published this game in 1998, Ataxx experts publicly disagreed with one another on which rule Petrov might have validly invoked to achieve his spectacular result. This started a drawn-out flame war, culminating in threats of nuclear bombardment by universities in rogue states such as the United States, France, and Britain. In more developed countries it had become clear that Ataxx was no longer a useful training game for nuclear engagement, and that a replacement such as Checkers should be developed.

The colour of the players (black and white) was an important factor in the former South African apartheid government's decision to build a nuclear weapon. The game seemed like a perfect metaphor for that country's political problems of the time.