Terhuchu

Terhuchu Opening Position

Alternate Names

Terhiichii, Terhüchü

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Terhuchu board and nine each of black and white counters are required for play.

Printable Terhuchu Board

History

Terhuchu is played in Assam and Angami, states in the northeast of India. The game was documented as Terhüchü by John Henry Hutton in The Angami Nagas, With Some Notes on Neighboring Tribes (1921).

Objective

The goal is to capture all of the opponent’s counters, the first player to achieve this being the winner. A player may also win by blocking any legal move by his opponent. If it is agreed that a draw seems imminent, the player with more counters may declare victory.

Play

Nine counters are placed by each player at the intersections, as above. Alternate turns between players entail moving a single counter along a line to any neighboring vacant intersection in any direction or a short jump over an opponent’s counter(s) in a straight line to a vacant intersection just beyond the counter being jumped. Counters are captured by being jumped over and are then removed from the board. Double or multiple captures in one move are permitted and direction may be changed after each enemy counter has been jumped. On any turn that it is possible to take an opponent’s counter it is compulsory to do so. If a player does not make the compulsory capture on their turn by failing to notice it, their opponent may then huff (remove) that counter as a bonus before their next move.

Variations

Murray (1) says that it is played with 8 or 10 counters per player.

Sources

1. Murray, H.J.R. A History of Board Games other than Chess. Oxford University Press, 1952.

2. Hutton, John Henry. The Angami Nagas, With Some Notes of Neighboring Tribes. London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1921.

3. Terhüchü at Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terh%C3%BCch%C3%BC