A game based on the legend of Archimedes teaching the Syracuse soldiers how to focus the sun's rays with their shields to set ships on fire. The goal is to begin your turn with a piece in your enemy's port. At the end of each turn, any enemy ships in sight of three of your pieces are destroyed by fire. Destroyed ships can eventually be rebuilt.
Inventors: Scott Marley, Philip Cohen
Published listing: BoardGameGeek: Archimedes.
Win if, at the start of your turn, one of your ships occupies the opponent's home port. You lose if you have no legal action (including rebuild).
Home ports are on opposite corners and starting fleets of 12 ships are clustered near said ports. The pie rule is used.
The default board is 8×8, but an 8×10 variant lessens the overwhelming strength of the main diagonal.
On your turn, either move a ship at least one square (queen-like sliding, blocked by occupied squares) or rebuild a formerly destroyed friendly ship by moving it out of your home port (if you already have 12 ships on the board, you can't build new ones at this time). You may not leave your own ships sitting on your home port at the end of your turn.
After the move, any enemy ship that lies on a line of sight of three or more of your ships is burned and removed (but they can rebuild them during a following turn as above). Burned ships may uncover new lines of sight, leading to a cascade of burned ships.
By default AP shows which ships are currently under attack, but this can be disabled if desired.