Gogol
No. of Players
Two
Equipment
Gogol is played on the cells of an 8x8 square grid or a chessboard. Eight each of black and white counters, called soldiers and two King counters that are somehow distinguished from the others, one black and one white, are required for play.
History
Designed by Gustav Levay
Objective
A player wins the game by capturing the opposing king, or by attaining the opponent's home row with his own king.
Play
The board is setup with the eight white pawns on the first rank and the eight black pawns on the eighth. White then places his king at any position on the board, except on the second rank and Black follows by placing his king anywhere except on the seventh rank. The game then commences with alternating turns.
On their turn, a player may move one of their own pawns or their king. Pawns may move to any vacant position on the board. They do not need to move along a diagonal or orthogonal line, they simply move to any vacant position. Kings move along any unobstructed straight or diagonal line, as the Queen in Orthochess. Despite the great freedom of movement that both counter utilize, there are a few invalid positions on the board which a player cannot move into. They are as follows:
Kings may not occupy the left or right edge of the board , while adjacent to a friendly pawn on the same column.
Kings may not occupy the first row while adjacent to a friendly pawn on the same row.
Kings may not occupy the second row while adjacent to a friendly pawn on the first row.
Either type of piece captures opposing pieces with an orthogonal or diagonal short jump, land at a the necessarily vacant position just beyond. Captures are not compulsory and cannot be enchained.
Strategy
Variations
Sources
Neto, Joāo Pedro and Jorge Nuno Silva. Mathematical Games, Abstract Games. Dover Publications, Inc. 2013. ISBN 978-0-486-49990-1
Gogol at BoardGameGeek. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3437/gogol