How pieces move

Basic movements

On any turn, a player must move one of the player's own piece to another square that is not occupied by an ally.

When the destination is occupied by an opponent's piece, a player is said to capture the piece. The captured piece are retained in hop1 zuo1, and can either be reused later (see below) or kept for the sake of completing hands, which are some combinations of pieces in the hop1 zuo1 that can earn the player some points.
Rather than moving a piece from a square to a square, the player is allowed to move a previously captured piece to an empty square.

The pieces' movements are described in the following diagram. Except for the diagram of tam2, symbols that are filled in black denotes the movement outside of tam2 hue; in tam2 hue, the movements in outlined symbols are to be used.

A circle denotes a one-square movement; the arrows signify an infinite movement, in which the piece can move to any square along the line provided that no piece intervenes in the trajectory.

Note the following special movements and effects:

A General in tam2 hue prevents any pieces of the same player in the eight neighboring squares from being taken.
A Shaman in tam2 hue is allowed to ignore one intervening piece blocking the trajectory.
A Chariot and a Horse is allowed to ignore one neighboring intervening piece blocking the trajectory.
Tam2 makes two moves of the King in a single turn.
Tam2 is a shared piece that both players can move.
Tam2 cannot capture other pieces, nor can it be captured.
Tam2 turns the eight neighboring squares into tam2 hue.

These images are from AIL PANIT LETI CETKAIK LETI KULANTE, the official rule book by the Ai'r's Ministry of Culture.

Stepping over

When the tentative goal of the movement is occupied by another piece, you can "step over" the piece and make an additional move from here. Note that stepping and capturing are two different concepts: you can step your ally while you cannot capture your ally; stepping the piece does not transport the stepped piece into your hop1 zuo1.

・If the stepping occurs in tam2 hue, the piece exhibits the tam2 hue movement from there. Similarly, if the stepping occurs outside of tam2 hue, it does not matter whether the piece originally left from tam2 hue to reach the stepping square: the movement from the stepping square is that of non-tam2 hue.

・You can only step up to one piece in a turn. Tam2 is no exception to this rule: while its move consists of two King's moves, you cannot step in the latter half of the Tam2's move if you have already stepped in the former half.

・If you plan to make an infinite movement after stepping over, you must cast sticks; the number of dark side gives the upper limit of squares that you can move.

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Next: How the game goes

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