The siege game

How to play the siege game

From the book's pages

• One player has two pieces, the officers, which he places wherever he likes inside the fortress — the marked area on the board. The other has 24 pieces, the soldiers, which occupy all the points around it.
• An officer moves one hole at a time in any direction. The soldiers move only towards the fortress, straight ahead towards it or diagonally.
• The officers capture the soldiers by jumping over a soldier and taking the hole beyond. A captured soldier is removed from the board. But an officer who fails to capture when he has the chance is himself removed from the board.
• The soldiers win if they trap the officers so that they cannot move, or occupy every single point inside the fortress. If so many soldiers are captured that there are no longer enough of them to occupy all the points, the officers are the victors.

My choices

• The board is the diagram's: 33 holes, with diagonals through every other hole. The fortress is the nine holes in the bottom arm.
• The officers are placed first, one at a time, then the soldiers move. A soldier can only go to a hole that lies closer to the fortress; inside the fortress it moves freely along the lines.
• An officer can jump several times in one move. If the officers let a capture go, the one that could have captured is removed — the one that moved, if it was that one.
• Nine soldiers are needed to fill the fortress, so the officers have won with eight left. If both officers are removed, the soldiers have won.
• The machine looks a few moves ahead.

New game