.TH el-ixir 6
.SH NAME
el-ixir \- a two-player board game
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B El-Ixir
is a board game with an element of randomness.  It is played by two players
at the same terminal, although it is possible to use a shared tmux for
remote play.

The game should be playable on any vt100ish terminal whose character set
includes a certain subset of glyphs of IBM ROM BIOS, encoded as Unicode.
Terminals not meeting this requirement should be long extinct.
.SH RULES
The object of the game is to connect as many blocks in your colour to the
corners.  The players take turns, being presented with four random tiles
each turn.
.P
The game is controlled by pressing any key (not \fIShift\fR or
\fICtrl\fR...); \fIq\fR quits.
.TP
.B Moving:
To make a move, choose one of the four tiles that were rolled for you.
Next, choose a direction (up, left, right, down) and length (1-4).  If a
block of that length won't fit, it's silently cut to the longest length
there's space for.  (Hint: it's almost always beneficial to choose length
4).
.TP
.B Anchoring:
If the block you placed causes some blocks to be connected to one of the
corners, you will be credited a point for every tile covered by a block in
your color that's connected to a corner by an unbroken line (via cardinal
directions only — diagonals are not enough).
.TP
.B Embracing:
There are two types of embraces:
.IP \(bu
complete embrace, when your blocks either completely enclose a part of
the board or wall it in into a border
.IP \(bu
anchored embrace, which trades the requirement of enclosing only parts
of the board that contain no free tiles for allowing braces that are
connected only diagonally.  It is possible that a move makes both players
eligible for an embrace \(em your opponent has priority.
.PP
Whichever player gets the most points, wins.