Okay, with this variant you win when the opponent can’t make a move on the board and is out of reserve pieces, just like the original 1960s game, but you only have six moves to win!
Take six pieces each of an unused player color (if your version doesn’t have extra color pieces you can use dice or beads) and place them beside you and everytime you make a move, you lose one, and when you’re all out, you lose the game!
But don’t worry, you get them all back (i.e. you reset back up to six) everytime you make one or both of the following:
Each player’s moves are tracked and reset separately; stalling only hurts yourself and not the opponent.
You get six because often these “stalling” moves are great setup moves for future attacks!
If you believe like Sackson did that the second player has an advantage in Focus, here’s a variant to balance the scales: only have the second player have these move counters. The first player can take their time, but they still won’t be deliberately stalling out the other player.
That also fixes the problem where if neither player wants to make a move the player who just happened to have the most move counters left then will win. Maybe it’s good that it works that way but I’m not sure.
Maybe you can also still stall by placing pieces on the board (temporarily changing your reserve count so you can reset) in a way that you can still get them back. I’m not sure. Eggheads, get cracking with your analyses!︎♥︎