Rules for Truchet

Translations

Translations by Babyl Fish

The Rules for Truchet

These are the rules as played at Boardspace. The basic rules and mechanisms are the same as described by Cameron Browne on his Truchet page, but the game at boardspace has a few minor deviations from his rules. This isn't a dispute, only a stage in the evolution of Truchet as a family of games based on the tiles.

The game is for two players, light and dark..

Equipment::
12 dark colored and 12 light colored, stackable chips.
A 9x9 board as shown. The edge tiles are fixed and cannot be moved. The cenral 7x7 pieces are all copies of a single, two sided tile, which can be flipped and rotated to match adjacent tiles.

Set up:
The central 49 tiles are placed randomly with the dark river or light river side up, and rotated so all adjacent colors match.
The 24 chips are placed in the same pattern as traditional checkers.

The object of the game is to win by occupying three of the four base squares, or alternatively, by capturing all your opponent's pieces.

empty board

initial setup

The play:

Light moves first. A move can consist of up to three parts.

You may Flip a tile, rotate it so colors all match, and replace it back on the playing area.. This has the effect of reconfiguring the pattern of rivers and islands on the board. The tile that is flipped must not be encumbered by any chips on any of it's corners.
You may Move a stack of your color anywhere it can slide freely on within it's current colored region of the board. You must move the entire stack, and all the spaces you move through or to must be unoccupied.
You may Split the moved stack (or if no stack was moved, any stack of your color) into two or more smaller stacks on adjacent spaces. No chips can be left behind at the original space, and no chips of your color can be on any of the destination spaces. If a destination space contains an opposing stack, you must place at least as many chips, and you will capture opposing stack.
or if you do not split, You may Merge the moved strack, (or if no stack was moved, any stack) and one or more additional stacks into a central square between them. The entire stacks must be merged. The central square must not contain a stack of your color, and if it contains an opposing stack, you must place at least as many chips on top and capture them. The final height after capturing must be 4 or less.
you Must either move, split, or join as part of your move. If you do any of these, you lose.

The summary is:

You have to move, split or join something.
Capture stacks that are the same height or shorter by merging or splitting onto them.
Moving and splitting operations are complete - you can't make a stack taller by merging or splitting other chips onto it, or make it shorter by merging or splitting from it.
At the end of a move, all the stacks are uniform in color, and 4 chips high or less.

white flips a tile and moves a stack

light merges 3 stacks and captures 2 dark

split

light splits 4 into 3 stacks and captures 3

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