Kris Burm's Riomino (or Tashkent Domino) is played with 25 identical dice that look like this:
The actual rules are as follows.
- Each player rolls 12 dice that then serve as their "dominos" (once a die is rolled the face showing up must stay up for the remainder of the game).
- The last die is rolled and placed between the players, who then take turns placing their "dominos" like in actual dominoes. The polyomino thus formed must always fit within a 5×5 grid.
- A player who cannot move loses.
Now when I took this game to Friday Night Magic yesterday with just the dice and no instruction manual, I forgot rule 1 above and inadvertently made the game of No-Luck Riomino:
- The dice are common property. Starting from an empty playing field, each player takes turns to place a new cube in any orientation they like, but still obeying the dominoes and bounding box restrictions in rule 2 above.
- A player who cannot move loses.
No-Luck Riomino is an impartial normal-play game, so one player has a winning strategy – but who?