Gauntlet

Copyright 2001, 2020 Phil Leduc

Gauntlet is a game of unequal forces that challenges players to run a gauntlet of blockers. Can you win against overwhelming odds?

Components

• The standard Gauntlet playing board is an 8 x 8 square board-- a checker board although the four corner squares are never actually used.

• Six light colored runner checkers and 12 dark colored blocker checkers. Here red and black are used.

Setup

The runner player places six checkers in the middle of the first rank (bottom row). The blocker player places six checkers in the middle of the first file (left column), and six checkers in the middle of the eighth file (right column). The blocker’s left and right checkers should be distinguishable. For example, the left checkers should be crown- or star-side up and the right checkers should be crown- or star-side down. See Figure 1.

Basic Terms

Runner: The player trying to move one of his checkers to the eighth rank of the board.

Blocker: The player trying to prevent the runner from achieving his goal by capturing or blocking all the runner’s pieces.

Game Play

Starting with the Runner player, players alternate moving one of their checkers. Each checkers moves in one orthogonal direction only.

• Runner checkers move up from the first rank directly towards the eighth rank, either by moving into an empty space or by jumping and capturing a blocker’s piece.

• Blocker pieces move in a similar manner, jumping and capturing, except that the left pieces always move toward the right and the right pieces always move towards the left.

Captures are made by jumping over an adjacent opponent piece into the next empty square. As in checkers, multiple captures are possible.

• Captures are mandatory in the standard game. When two or more pieces are able to capture opponent pieces, the moving player must choose the move that captures the most pieces.

• The blocker’s pieces may not jump over or capture blocker pieces. In effect, left and right blocker pieces can block each other preventing further movement along a rank.

Winning the Game

Players have mutually exclusive goals.

• The object of the game for the runner player is to survive a gauntlet and reach the last rank with any one of his pieces.

• For the blocking player, the object is to capture or block all the runner’s pieces.

Match Play

A Gauntlet match consists of an even number of games, usually two, with players alternating as the runner player, swapping roles. At the end of a game the runner player scores the sum of the ranks of each remaining runner token on the game board. For example, a runner token on the eight rank scores 8 points and a token on the lower first rank scores 1 point. The winner of the match is the player with the highest point total after an even number of games are played.

For tournaments, 10 x 10 boards should be used and captures are no longer forced. However, when a capture is made if more captures are possible for the moving token, those captures must be made.

Designer Comments

Gauntlet was the first game I ever designed. Although not proven at this time, the blocking player's probably has a won game. That said, I still like the game. The reason I like Gauntlet is that I designed the game to play with my very young nephews. The rules were easy to understand and challenging enough for an adult when playing the runner.