Go with the Floe
Go with the Floe Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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 (Figure 1, Standard setup; the source says "to the right" because the figure sits beside the text on the web page).
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's 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.
Figures
Figure 1. Standard setup.
Figure 2. Polar bear movement. The White token at e3 can move to any space containing a white dot. Tokens never end their move in a space with a ring marker. The e3 can capture the Black token at d2. Moving to g3 is a jump over a ring marker.
Figure 3. Seal movement. The endangered Black token at d2 can move to one of the spaces containing a small dot. The Black token cannot capture or jump over the White token at e3.