Crossings

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A 8x8 square checkerboard and sixteen each of black and white counters are required for play.

History

Crossings was invented by Robert Abbott and published in Sid Sackson's A Gamut of Games in 1969. Crossings was the precursor to Epaminondas, which uses a larger board and expanded rules.

Objective

A player wins by moving one friendly counter across the board to the farthest row, called a crossing. Unless the opponent can respond immediately on the next turn with another crossing, the game is over and won by the first player. If the crossing is countered by an enemy crossing, they cancel each other and the game continues with the crossed counters remaining where they are for the rest of the game.

Play

The board is setup as shown above with one player playing white and the other black. Turns alternate with white moving first. A single counter may move one space in any direction (orthogonally or diagonally) to an adjacent unoccupied square. Counters also move as a phalanx group, so long as the entirety of the phalanx are adjacent to one another along a straight line (orthogonal or diagonal). A single counter may belong to one or more phalanxes. A phalanx moves, either whole or in part, in either of two directions along the line which defines it and move a number of spaces equal to the number of moving counters in the phalanx. When a subgroup of the phalanx is moved it must include one of the counters at the end of the larger group of which it is a part. On a turn, a player may move a single friendly counter, an entire phalanx, or a subgroup of a phalanx.

A moving group of any size stops when the head of its group reaches the maximum distance, an edge of the board, a friendly counter, or the head of an equal or longer enemy phalanx. If it reaches the head of a shorter opposing phalanx aligned along the same axis, or a single opposing counter, which may or may not form part of a phalanx differently aligned, it captures and replaces that singleton. If the number of contiguous opposing pieces along the line of movement is greater than or equal to the number of pieces in the moving group, then the move is illegal and cannot be made.

Sources

  1. Sackson, Sid. A Gamut of Games. Castle Books, New Tork, 1969.