It is a brilliantly simple logical and strategic game, and mastering its rules takes less than 10 minutes.
The game takes place between two opponents who not only have to plan the strategy of their moves, but also anticipate the opponent's moves (so as not to be defeated before the end of the game). SKATO is also a great training for gray cells and at the same time allows you to play many pleasant mental sparrings between players of different ages and with different board experience. This extremely exciting game will interest both children and their parents or guardians, and generational mental battles will become an invariable element of spending time together. While playing SKATO, a child acquires and develops the skills of logical thinking, concentration, strategy, emotional control and cool analysis, while an adult player consolidates these skills and thanks to them, the senior delays the process of dementia.
The game involves players placing their pieces on the board in such a way that pieces of the same color that are adjacent to each other on at least one side create as much space as possible. Each player is assigned one color of pieces. The game begins with one player placing his pawn anywhere on the board, and then the second player adds his pawn so that one of its sides is adjacent to the opponent's first pawn. Then, players place their pieces alternately until the entire board is filled, trying to build the largest possible field of adjacent pieces of their own color. When placing pieces, we follow the rule that the piece we add must have at least one side adjacent to any piece already on the board. A move consisting in adding a pawn that touches another pawn only by its corner is illegal. It is allowed to place several unconnected fields, but only those fields that consist of at least 5 pieces count towards the final score. The game ends when all fields on the board are filled and all pieces are placed.
Note: during the game, placing a sequence of 5 pieces horizontally or vertically by any player ends the game with his victory.