Objective
Win by checkmating the enemy King. A checkmate happens when a King is besieged and its side cannot
answer the stack or evacuate safely.
Board And Setup
- The board is 3 rows by 15 columns.
- Spades begin on the top home row. Hearts begin on the bottom home row.
- The middle row is the neutral lane.
- Each side starts, left to right, with A, 3, 5, empty, 7, 9, J, K, Q, 10, 8, empty, 6, 4, 2.
- Hearts move first.
Movement
- A piece may slide sideways up to its movement limit. A slides 1, ranks 2-6 slide their rank, and 7
through Q slide 4. The King slides 1.
- Sliding swaps through occupied columns like a conveyor belt. A displaced piece shifts into the
column the mover just left.
- pieces may move from a home row into an empty neutral square in the same column.
- A King cannot voluntarily slide, step, or capture onto a square attacked by an enemy card. A King
may still be moved onto an attacked square indirectly by another card's slide.
Captures
A-6 Soldier
Capture one square orthogonally.
7-8 Pikemen
Capture one row forward and one or two columns sideways.
9-10 Flankers
Capture sideways on the same row at distance one or two.
J-Q Archers
Capture forward or backward diagonals at distance one or two.
King
Captures one square orthogonally.
Sieges
- Capturing a King starts a siege instead of immediately removing it.
- The attacker stacks on top of the King. The King's side must capture the top piece on that same
square.
- Each successful answer replaces the top of the stack, and the other side must answer in turn.
- If the King's side cannot answer while an enemy piece is on top, the attacker wins by checkmate.
- If the King's side wins the stack, the King must evacuate left or right into an empty adjacent
square that is not attacked by an enemy card, while the winning defender stays behind.
- If the King wins the stack but has no safe evacuation gap, the opponent wins.
Ascending
- Moving a piece into the neutral row is called ascending.
- the side (hearts or spades) that a piece ascended from is displayed on the corner and affects its
movement
- a card in the neutral row is still kind of counted as in the row it ascended from. If a piece in the
row it ascended from moves through the ascended piece's column, it gets swapped just like any other
piece in the row it ascended from
- If two pieces are ascended from opposite sides and are next to each other, a collision can happen
when
one side tries to move a piece through their ascended piece's column. If they make a move such that
that
the two pieces end up on the same square, the piece that moves captures the other no matter the color.
- If a conveyor collision hits a King, it starts a siege instead of immediately winning the game.
Loop Rule
You may not move in a way that returns all of your own pieces to the layout they had one or two plies
ago. This blocks both immediate take-backs and cooperative two-player shuffles.
Loop Rule
You may not move in a way that returns all of your own pieces to the layout they had one or two plies
ago. This blocks both immediate take-backs and cooperative two-player shuffles.
Optional Opening
The default digital setting limits each player's first three turns to home-row swaps only. Turn it off
for the full game from move one.