Go with the Floe

Copyright 2014, Phil Leduc

Go with the Floe is a two-player abstract chase game between predatory polar bears and slippery seals. The seal player wants to isolate the seals beyond the reach of the pursuing polar bears. The polar bear player wins if both seals are caught, otherwise the seal player wins.

Components

• Modified 8 x 8 board with 52 ice spaces

• 2 black seal tokens and 2 white polar bear tokens.

• 50 hole-in-the-ice ring markers

Setup

Place the board between the players and position the stones as shown to the right.

Game Play

Starting with the Black player, players take turns moving one of their tokens. A player may pass a turn only if he or she has no legal move.

Either player tokens can:

• Move one or two empty spaces in any one direction, like a range-restricted chess queen, or

• Move by jumping over one ring marker in any direction into an empty space, as in checkers but without capturing or multiple jumps.

Capturing

Only White may capture an opponent’s token and this can only be done from an adjacent space, like a chess king. On capturing both the white and black tokens are removed from play leaving the capture space empty.

After moving or capturing, the moving player places a ring marker on the moving token’s starting space and any empty space passed over.

Game End

The game ends when one of the following occurs:

• The White player captures both Black tokens. White wins.

• The Black player has one token isolated and which cannot be captured. Black wins.

• Both players pass on consecutive turns. Black wins.

Match Play

It is recommended that players play two games and swap roles. After each game, the winning player scores the number of empty spaces left on the board. Whichever player has the highest score after two games wins. Of course, tied scores are possible.