Seattle Battle Croquet

Complete Rules

Equipment

A standard croquet set, i.e. a mallet and a ball for each player, nine wickets (half-loops of wire), and one post (a standard set comes with two).

Any number of players can play, but each should have a ball (so for more than six players, more than one set is needed).

Setup

Drive the post into the ground in the middle of the playing area. Set up six wickets in pairs facing away from the post. The two wickets in each pair should be about two feet apart, and the pairs should be 120° from each other. Set up the remaining three wickets somewhat further out (at least six feet from the post), one opposite each pair of starting wickets, facing perpendicularly to the post. The over-all scale of the setup can vary according to the space available and the interest in a long versus a tight game.

Each player chooses a ball. Play order will be determined by the colors on the post, starting at the top.

Turns

In each player's turn, she starts with one stroke, i.e. one chance to strike her ball with her mallet. If the struck ball goes entirely through a wicket which is next in that player's path, in the correct direction, or if her ball hits the post when it is next on her path, she gains one more stroke. If she achieves more than one wicket/post on her path, she gets more than one bonus stroke, one per wicket/post achieved. She can also gain strokes by roqueting another ball, i.e. by making her ball strike the other ball (see below).

On a player's first turn, she places her ball anywhere in the triangle defined by the post and the two edges of her first wicket (generally, it's advantageous to put the ball just in front of the wicket), then takes her first stroke.

Path

The first player starts in front of her choice of starting wicket among the three close to the post. The second player starts on the wicket to the right of that. The third starts on the wicket to the right of the second, i.e. to the left of the first. The fourth starts in front of the same wicket as the first, the fifth on the same as the second, and so on.

The complete course for each player consists of three loops. Each loop involves going out through the starting pair of wickets, turning right to go through (in a clockwise direction) the outer wicket, then inbound through the pair of wickets to the right, and hitting the post. At the post, the player turns left to start the next loop.

When the player completes the last loop except for hitting the post, she is poison.

Poison

If a poison player's ball strikes another ball on the poison player's turn, that other player dies. The poison player gains one victory point, and takes one extra stroke from where her ball lies.

A poison player can be killed by a non-poison player if her ball is driven through a wicket or into a post. Any player can be killed by having a poison ball driven into her ball. The player whose turn it is (who did the driving) gains a point for each such kill.

When a player is poison, any time her ball strikes the post or goes entirely through a wicket, she dies. She gains one victory point for a suicide on the post if either she hasn't killed any other player since becoming poison (this time) or all the other players are at that moment killed, so she has no target on the field.

A poison player never has more than one stroke; if she achieves the last two wickets in one stroke, she never-the-less has only one stroke for her first kill attempt.

Rebirth

When a player is killed, she picks up her ball; it is not part of the game till her next turn.

On her turn, she returns the ball to the course in front of the first wicket on her current loop (i.e. anywhere in the triangle defined by the post and the two feet of that wicket), then takes her shot.

If she was not poison when she died, her current loop is the one she was working on when she died, i.e. her first loop if she never hit the post, otherwise the loop after she most recently hit the post. If she was poison when she died, her current loop is her first loop!

Roquet/Croquet

When a non-poison player's ball strikes another ball, she has "roqueted" that ball. She can take a stroke from where her ball comes to rest; she can "croquet" the struck ball by putting her ball next to it, standing on her ball, and striking her ball, sending the other ball flying without moving her ball; or or she can move her ball anywhere within a mallet-head's length from the struck ball and take a stroke.

If the target ball was not a poison ball and her first stroke was from withing a mallet-heads distance of the target ball, she gets one additional stroke.

Goal

The game is won when a player achieves an agreed upon number of victory points (the default is the number of players in the game, so that you have to kill somebody more than once, or have gained a suicide point).

Details and Special Rules

Bonus strokes lost when gaining new strokes

Whenever strokes are earned, any previous bonus strokes are lost, except for combinations of wickets and the post. For example, if a player has two strokes for going through two wickets, and on her first bonus stroke roquets another player, she has just two strokes; she lost the remaining stroke for the two wickets when she gained the strokes from the new roquet.

As another example, if a ball goes through a target wicket, then roquets another ball, the target wicket counts (the next wicket becomes the target), but provides no bonus stroke; the player only gets the strokes from the roquet. Or if on the same stroke a ball roquets and then goes through a target wicket, the strokes from the roquet are lost; the player has only the bonus from the wicket.

Going through a target wicket on another's turn

If a player's ball is driven through a target wicket (or hits the post when that is her target) on another player's turn, that wicket/post counts, but the player earns no bonus stroke, i.e. she starts her next turn with one stroke, with the next wicket/post as her target.

Live/dead on another ball

A player can't get bonus strokes from a roquet unless she is live on the other ball. She becomes dead on the ball after she roquets that ball.

She becomes live on all balls when she achieves a target wicket or post, and she becomes live on any individual ball when that ball achieves a target wicket/post.

Players are live on all poison balls at the start of each turn.

A reborn player starts live on all balls.

If a ball hits two balls in one stroke, then the player is dead on the first ball despite getting no bonus shots from it.

Minimum motion

A struck ball must move at least a mallet's head distance unless it roquets a ball on which it is live, makes a wicket or post, or becomes set up for a wicket or post. On failure, all balls are replaced to their starting positions and the stroke is retried.

Bridged

If a ball comes to rest part way through a target wicket (i.e. it can be touched by a mallet head parallel to the wicket from either side), it is bridged. It can still be roqueted, but after all balls come to rest, it is returned to the bridged position. When a ball becomes bridged, the player doesn't earn an extra stroke, but on her next turn, if she drives the ball the rest of the way through, she does earn a stroke.

A bridged ball can't be killed, but a poison ball still earns a bonus stroke for roqueting it.

Death is instant

If a poison ball goes entirely through a wicket and then strikes another ball, that ball is not killed, though it still remains in its displaced position (unless it was bridged). If a poison ball is struck by another poison ball and then careens into a third ball, that third ball is not killed.

Legal strokes

The game owner can set the rules for what strokes are allowed; the default is any clean hit (i.e. not a push) with the head of the mallet.

This is not British Battle Croquet

We'd already named this "Battle Croquet" when we found that some Brits had invented a baroque game they also call British Battle Croquet. This has no connection to that.