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Best
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One pawn, moved by both players. Only the squares around it decide the game.
The first move places the pawn on any empty square of the triangle and leaves a stone of your colour there. After that, each turn you slide the pawn any distance along one of the six lines — it cannot jump over a stone — and drop a stone of your colour where it stops, which blocks that square too. The game ends the instant the pawn has nowhere left to go. Then you count only the square under the pawn and the squares touching it: whoever owns more of those wins, no matter what the rest of the board looks like. Beat a rival and the next one searches deeper while your move clock shrinks; run out of time and the match is lost. Your score is the number of rivals you beat.
The first thing to accept is that most of the stones you place will never matter. Only seven squares decide the game — the one the pawn ends on and the six around it — and you do not know which seven until the very end. So stop thinking about territory and start thinking about where the pawn is likely to die.
It usually dies in a corner or against a wall of stones, because that is where its six lines run out soonest. A pawn in the open middle has escape routes in every direction and cannot be trapped. This gives you the central tension: driving the pawn toward a cramped area is how games end, and whoever is winning the count near that area wants it to end.
That makes every move double-edged in a way no other board game quite matches. Moving the pawn next to a cluster of your own stones looks wonderful, but it is now your rival's turn and they simply move it away, leaving your stone as one more irrelevant marker. The stones that pay off are the ones you place near squares the pawn will be forced back to, not the ones you place where it is standing now.
Practically: prefer short moves when you are ahead in the neighbourhood, because a short move keeps the pawn in the region you control and gives your rival fewer ways to drag it somewhere neutral. When you are behind, move long — cross the board, reset the fight somewhere your rival has no stones. And late in the game, count before every move. If the pawn would be trapped after your move, check who wins that count first; a move that traps the pawn while you are one stone down is a resignation, not a finish.