Focus is an abstract strategy board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

, designed by Sid Sackson

Sid Sackson

Sid Sackson was a significant American board game designer and collector.His most popular creation is probably the business game Acquire...

 and first published in 1964

1960s in games

This page lists board games, card games, and wargames published in the 1960s.-Significant games-related events in the 1960s:* Parker Brothers is bought by General Mills ....

 by Kosmos

Kosmos (game publisher)

Franckh-Kosmos Verlags-GmbH & Co. is a media publishing house based in Stuttgart, Germany, founded in 1822 by Johann Friedrich Franckh. In the nineteenth century the company published the fairy tales of Wilhelm Hauff as well as works by Wilhelm Waiblinger and Eduard Mörike.The "Friends of Nature...

. The game has been re-published many times since, sometimes under the titles Domination or Dominio. Focus won the 1981 Spiel des Jahres

Spiel des Jahres

The Spiel des Jahres is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the stated purpose of rewarding excellence in game design, and promoting top-quality games in the German market. It is thought that the existence and popularity of the award is one of the major drivers of the quality...

 and Essen Feather

Essen Feather

The Essen Feather is an award for German-style board games, given at the Deutscher Spiele Preis ceremony at the Spiel game fair in Essen, Germany...

 awards. The game appears in Sackson's A Gamut of Games

A Gamut of Games

A Gamut of Games, written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969, contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil, card, and board games. Many of the games in the book had never before been published...

in the section New Battles on an Old Battlefield.

Gameplay

Two to four players move stacks of one to five pieces around a checkerboard

Checkerboard

A checkerboard or chequerboard is a board of chequered pattern on which English draughts is played. It is an 8×8 board and the 64 squares are of alternating dark and light color, often red and black....

 with the three squares in each corner removed, thus forming a 6×6 board with 1×4 extensions on each side. Stacks may move as many spaces as there are pieces in the stack. Players may only move a stack if the topmost piece in the stack is one of their pieces. When a stack lands on another stack, the two stacks merge; if the new stack contains more than five pieces, then pieces are removed from the bottom to bring it down to five. If a player's own piece is removed, they are kept and may be placed on the board later in lieu of moving a stack. If an opponent's piece is removed, it is captured. The last player who is able to move a stack wins.

External links

• PDF Rules for Domination, Hasbro
  Hasbro
  Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...
  
  's re-publication of the game.