Relativity is a piecepack game by Ron and Marty Hale-Evans. It is a two-player abstract game with interesting movement mechanics. Being able to distinguish ranks is important while being able to distinguish suits is not important so a piecepack design optimized for playing this game may consider coloring ranks instead of suits.

In the game of Reversi one player is represented by the suited side of piecepack components while the other player is represented by the unsuited side of piecepack components. A reversi-friendly piecepack design makes it easier to distinguish between the suited and unsuited sides of piecepack components. We also show how to play reversi with a piecepack stackpack.

Jonathan C. Dietrich is a notable piecepack designer who has written several piecepack games, developed VASSAL’s piecepack module, and designed the JCD piecepack. In this demo we’ll be making a starting diagram for the game Triactor that he co-authored using a piecepackr configuration that directly uses his JCD piecepack images contained in VASSAL’s piecepack module.

The package ppdf contains functions that generate the starting piece arrangements for several piecepack games. These functions return data frames that can be used directly with piecepackr::pmap_piece() or ppcli::cat_piece() to generate piecepack game diagrams or they can be used with ppn‘s Portable Piecepack Notation parser read_ppn() to initially setup the game pieces.

Some demos of chess-ranked piecepacks as well as the starting diagrams of several chess variants playable with a piecepack.

Everest is a piecepack game by Mark A. Biggar featuring programmed movement. It is a “King of the Hill” game that features a visually striking board with the tiles physically arranged as a hill. Here is the starting diagram for it using an “icy” piecepack tile color scheme to match its snowy Himalayan Yeti theme:

Tak is a two-player abstract designed by James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss that is best visualized in 3D. We show an example of configuring piecepackr to draw standard Tak game pieces. We also show how the game of Tak can also be played with a piecepack stackpack.

Backgammon is one of the oldest known board games. Like other classic board games like checkers and chess it is also possible to play with a single piecepack. We illustrate the starting diagram for playing a game of backgammon with a piecepack using a paired suit-color design.

Tablut is a historical (hnefa)tafl game played by the Sámi people until at least the 1700s whose rules were written down by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in 1732. Below is a starting diagram for playing a game of Tablut with a piecepack.

Cribbage is a popular two-person card game that usually requires a special cribbage board to keep score. Below is a diagram of using a piecepack to make an effective cribbage board.