Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Mike Cosgriff.

Strand

This is a two player game that is played on a three dimensional board, of dimensions 4x4x4.

Each player has seven pieces; one king and six pawns. All the pieces have the same movement capabilities, however, their movement options will change drastically depending on their relative positions.

RULE 1: All pieces must remain adjacent to their fellow pieces. However, they need not be adjacent to the opponents' pieces. Adjacent is defined as the next space along a linear axis. A player’s piece need not be adjacent during its movement but must comply with the adjacency rule before it begins its move and must end its move on a space which is adjacent to one of his fellows. Thus the pieces may form chains, loops, clusters, etc.

RULE 2: Any piece may move any number of spaces along any of the described linear axis. Only linear moves are permitted.

AXIS 1- orthogonal; straight along a row, file or column. (Column in this case being up and down.)

AXIS 2- diagonal; a combination of two orthogonal axis’.

AXIS 3- compound diagonal- a combination of three orthogonal axis’

Rule 3: Pawns cannot be captured.

Rule 4: The objective is to capture the opponents' king. Any piece may capture the king by moving onto the space that the king is occupying.

The set up is diagrammed below.

 

K p x x

P p x x

x x x x

x x x x

 

 

P p x x

P x x x

x x x x

x x x x

 

 

x x x x

x x x x

x x x p

x x p p
 
 

x x x x

x x x x

x x p p

x x p K

Game design by: Mike Cosgriff


Written by Mike Cosgriff. Html-conversion and minor editing by Hans Bodlaender.
WWW page created: February 4, 1999.