Focus (board game)

Focus

Designers	Sid Sackson
Publishers	Kosmos Milton Bradley Parker Brothers
Publication	1963; 61 years ago (1963)
Players	2–4
Playing time	45'
Skills	Strategy

Focus is an abstract strategy board game, designed by Sid Sackson and first published in 1963 by Kosmos. The game has been re-published many times since, sometimes under the titles Domination or Dominio. Focus won the 1981 Spiel des Jahres and Essen Feather awards. The game appears in Sackson's A Gamut of Games in the section New Battles on an Old Battlefield.

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

Games included the game as Domination in their "Top 100 Games of 1982", noting that while it does include short versions for 3-4 players, "the two-player game has the most depth".^[1]

• Family Games: The 100 Best^[2]

• Death Stacks

• Sackson, Sid (1982) [1st Pub. 1969, Random House, New York]. "Focus". A Gamut of Games. Pantheon Books. pp. 125–35. ISBN 0-394-71115-7.

• PDF Rules for Domination, Hasbro's re-publication of the game.
• Focus at BoardGameGeek