Intermedium: Stepping Stones Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Setup
• Turn
  • Movement
  • Captures
  • Moving example
  • Another moving example
  • Capturing example
• Goal

Setup

This game is played on a 10x7 square board with the following setup.

The cities are the central cells on each player's first row (in the diagram, the cells with dots).

The printed text does not describe the starting stacks in words. The starting position is shown in the setup photograph for this game on BGG. The jpneto.github.io copy of these rules gives the starting position as a diagram, which encodes each player's first row as a single six-stone stack on the central cell, followed by stacks on the rows below it; the stone counts in that encoding are not stated in the printed text.

Turn

On each turn, each player must move one of his stacks with size greater than 1 (i.e., single stones do not move).

Movement

The stack moves in any diagonal direction or combination of diagonal directions, leaving one stone at a time on each cell it is moving over.

While in the moving sequence, the stack cannot move to the opposite last direction (e.g., if it moved northeast the next step cannot be to southwest). With sufficient stones, a stack may return to the cell it started.

On the first two turns, each player must advance their chosen stacks and occupy at least one empty cell.

Captures

To make one capture there are two conditions:

1. The last stone must land over a single stone.
2. If adjacent to the cell of 1) there are enemy stacks surrounded on all sides by friendly stacks, these enemy stacks are captured.

In the middle of the board, each cell is surrounded by four cells (orthogonal directions). On the edge there are three cells. The corners are surrounded by just two cells.

Note: the jpneto.github.io copy words the first condition as "The last stone must land on a single friendly stone" and the second as "If, adjacent to the final sowed square, there are enemy stacks surrounded by all sides by friendly stacks, these enemy stacks are captured". The text above is the Super Duper Games copy.

Moving example

The stack can move in the 1-2-3-4 combination of diagonal directions, leaving one stone on each cell.

Another moving example

In this sample, the stack returns one stone to the initial cell.

Capturing example

In the top diagram, black can capture the white stack by moving its stack of size 3.

He moves the stack SE, SE and NE landing on a single stone.

Since the white stack is surrounded on all sides, it is captured.

Goal

A player wins by capturing the enemy city (it does not matter if it has stacks on it) in the same way as capturing stacks.

Another way to win is to leave the opponent with no valid moves (i.e., all his stacks have size 1).