Vpered (Russian for "Forward") is a 2 player abstract strategy game played on a 6x8 board with different sized stackable pieces.
Equipment:
6x8 board
There are 24 pieces total - 12 white, 12 black.
Each player has 12 pieces of their own color: 6 small, 4 medium, 2 large
Each piece has two sides, a "heads" and a "tails".
Rules:
Board Setup & Starting:
The game starts with the pieces arranged as shown in the first layout of the image below, with the "heads" side facing up.
As in Go, the player who is playing black goes first.
Valid Moves:
Moves must be orthogonal (not diagonal). Orthogonal means vertical or horizontal.
To start, players can only move forward or sideways, never backwards.
There can only be one piece on a square.
Small moves 3 squares
Medium moves 2 squares
Large moves 1 square
Piece Point Values:
The values of pieces are relative to size:
Small = 1 point
Medium = 2 points
Large = 3 points
Jumping:
Pieces may "jump" over lesser valued pieces, but not of same valued pieces...
A small can not jump over small, but a medium can. However, a Medium cannot jump over a medium piece UNLESS it has a captured small piece on top of it (see what "captured" means, below), then it may jump over a medium piece.
Moving to opponent's home row:
If a player moves a piece to the row farthest from them (the opponents "home row") they either (see how playtesting works this out):
1) Flip the piece over to show tails, and are now able to move the tails up pieces in any direction as well as have new "powers": Small - can now "kill" opponents small pieces (i.e. land in the same spot as an opponents piece and remove the opponents piece to count towards their score at the end of the game)
or
2) Remove their piece from the board, and one of their opponents small pieces. If the opponent has no small pieces left on the board, then the player may remove one of the opponents medium piece. Each of these small pieces grants 1 point a piece (or, if you remove a medium, then you get 2 points)
Capturing/Killing:
There are two methods to "remove" pieces from the board:
1) Capturing - This method occurs when a Medium or a Large piece lands on a space occupied by an opponents piece one size smaller than the moved piece (i.e. Medium can capture opponents Small, and Large can capture opponents Medium, but Large may NOT capture opponents Small piece (as that is not one size smaller, but two)).
Capturing an opponents piece means that you now stack the smaller opponents piece on top of your piece. This now allows you to "kill" a smaller piece.
2) Killing -
a) Once you have captured a smaller piece of your opponent, your newly combined/stacked piece can "kill" a piece. This will add to your points at the end of the game. This means that if you have an upgraded Medium piece with your opponents captured Small piece stacked on top and you land on another small piece of your opponent you can now remove that small piece from the board, because there is no more room to "stack" the captured piece. This small piece will grant you one point.
b) The other way to kill an opponents piece is to surround it by placing non-jumpable pieces to the first spot of each potential move with your pieces such that they have no way to escape. If this is the case you may remove that piece from the board and add it to your killed pieces pool.
End Game:
Play continues until there are no more valid moves, all pieces are captured (determine what this means during playtesting), or both players agree to "pass" and end the game, or one player passes twice (thrice?) in a row.
At the end of the game each player adds up the point value of their killed pieces and whoever has the highest score wins.
Starting Layout
Possible Moves (color coded for ease of differentiating pieces (red: large, green: medium, blue:small)
