Top Hats Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
  • Placing the stacks
• Movement
• Capturing
• The Board
  • Shrinking the board
• End of the Game
• Quick Rules (German edition)

Components

• 1 game board
• 46 top hats
• 45 stickers (15 red, 15 yellow, 15 blue)

Setup

• Before the very first game, stick the colour stickers on top of the hats. One hat is left without a sticker: this is the neutral hat.
• Place the neutral hat on the central space of the board.
• Each player chooses a colour and takes the 15 hats of that colour. In a two-player game, each player keeps 9 hats of his own colour and receives 6 hats of the opponent's colour. In a three-player game, each player keeps 9 hats of his own colour and receives 3 hats from each of the two opponents.
• Note on the exchange: the German rulebook describes the same exchange from the other side: each player takes the 15 hats of his colour, keeps 9, and gives the remaining 6 (two-player game) or 3 per opponent (three-player game) to the opponent or opponents. The resulting split of hats is the same in both versions.
• With his 15 hats, each player builds 5 stacks of 3 hats each. The hat on top of each of his stacks must be marked with his own colour. The hats underneath are placed face down, so that the opponents do not know their order.

Placing the stacks

• At the start of the game, the players place their stacks, one at a time and in turn, anywhere within the two central concentric rings of the board. The outermost ring and the innermost ring are excluded.
• The first move is made by the player who placed his stacks first. Play then continues in clockwise order.

Movement

On his turn, a player makes one of the following moves:

a) Move one of his own stacks into a free space adjacent to the one it occupies, in any direction; or

b) Jump over one or more of his own or the opponents' stacks, in the manner of Chinese checkers. A jump is possible only if the space on the far side of the jumped stack is free at the moment of the jump.

• The whole stack moves or jumps together, never only its top hat. (German edition only; not stated in the Italian text.) Once the upper hats have been removed, a single remaining hat moves or jumps on its own.
• During a multi-jump, a player may land on the same free space more than once, but he may not jump over the same stack more than once in the same move.
• A player may jump over his own stacks; jumping over one's own stack has no effect on it.
• A player is not obliged to jump more than one opponent stack per move. He may stop his jumps whenever he wishes.

Capturing

When a stack jumps over one or more opposing stacks, the top hat of each jumped opposing stack is removed from the game. The removed hats are placed beside the board, stacked by colour.

• A stack of 3 becomes a stack of 2, a stack of 2 becomes a stack of 1, and a stack of 1 disappears from the board.
• When the top hat of a stack of 2 or 3 is removed, the hat underneath is revealed. If it is of the same colour as the removed hat, the stack still belongs to the same player. If it is of an opposing colour, the stack changes hands and now belongs to the player whose colour it shows.
• When a player jumps over his own stacks, nothing is removed.
• Compulsory capture. When a capture is possible, the player must capture at least one opposing hat. He may choose the route, may stop his jumps whenever he likes, and may or may not also jump over his own stacks, as long as he jumps over at least one opposing stack and removes the top hat of it.

Timing of removal: the Italian text states that the removed hats are taken off at the end of the move. The German text states that the top hat of a jumped opposing stack is taken away immediately after the jump, and that the hat underneath then becomes the new top hat and shows the new owner. The Italian text is followed here; the German timing is noted for players who want to resolve it differently.

The Board

The board consists of 4 concentric rings, each in a different colour, plus the central space.

• The central space holds the neutral hat. It can always be jumped over like any ordinary stack.
• The outermost ring is the edge zone (fascia di rispetto in Italian, Randzone in German). No stack may end its move there, except by capturing an opposing stack: a stack may pass through the edge zone, but may not stop there. The exception is a stack that lands in the edge zone after capturing an opposing stack. Such a stack must leave the edge zone at its next move.
  • If a player has a stack in the edge zone at his turn, he must move it into an inner ring, unless he has a capture to make elsewhere on the board.
  • Priority order: (1) make at least one capture; (2) get one of his own stacks out of the edge zone.
  • If a capture can be made with a stack that is in the edge zone, the capture must be made with that stack. If there are several ways to do this, the player may choose.

Shrinking the board

• Once 5 or fewer stacks remain on the board in total, the player whose turn it is may, if he wishes and if no stack is in the edge zone, declare the battlefield shrunk. The neutral hat counts as a stack for this purpose; the German text states this explicitly.
• When the battlefield is shrunk, the outermost ring becomes completely forbidden territory, and the second-outermost ring becomes the new edge zone, with the same functions as the previous one. (Italian text: "territorio completamente vietato". The German text instead states that the second ring is also declared an edge zone "until the end of the game", and does not mention the outermost ring becoming forbidden. The Italian wording is followed here.)
• Any stack standing in the newly declared zone must be moved to the interior of the board as soon as possible.

End of the Game

• The game is won by the player who manages to leave only hats of his own colour on the board.
• In a three-player game, one colour may disappear from the board. This does not mean that the player is eliminated. When top hats are removed by jumping, his colour may reappear, and he can still win the game.

Quick Rules (German edition)

The German edition includes a short-form rules sheet ("TOP HAT – Kurzspielregel"). It is reproduced here in English for reference; it repeats the rules above.

Goal: Remove the opponent's hats until only your own hats remain visible on the board.

Setup

1. Place the neutral hat on the central space.
2. Each player takes the 15 hats of one colour. With two players, each gives 6 of them to the opponent; with three players, each gives 3 to each opponent.
3. Build five stacks of three hats each. The top hat must show your own colour: it marks ownership of the stack.
4. In turn, place the stacks on free spaces of the second or third ring.

Note: in the rest of the text, "stack" also refers to a single hat.

Turn sequence

1. Determine a starting player by lot.
2. On your turn, either move one of your own stacks to a free neighbouring space (but not to a dark space of the edge zone), or jump over an adjacent stack, as long as the space behind it is free. Chain jumps are allowed.
3. After jumping over an opposing stack, remove its top hat. The hat underneath becomes the new top hat and shows the new owner of the stack. Compulsion: if you can jump over an opposing stack, you must do so. If there are several possibilities, you may choose freely.

The edge zone

• You may not end a move on a space of the outer edge zone, except when you land there after jumping over an opposing stack. On your next move you must then move that stack away at once.
• When only five stacks remain in play, the player whose turn it is may also declare the second ring an edge zone until the end of the game.

End of the game

When only hats of one colour are visible on the board, that player has won.