Krieg

I originally learned this game on a PDP-8, under the name "Kriegspiel". It is not, however, related to the chess variant of the same name, and to avoid confusion, I have changed the name of this game to merely "Krieg".

The game is played by two players on a four-by-four board. Each player has four playing pieces.

The initial setup is as follows: 

    A   B   C   D
  +---+---+---+---+
1 |   |   |   |   |
  | O | O |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+
2 |   |   |   |   |
  | O | O |   |   |
  +---+---+---+---+
3 |   |   |   |   |
  |   |   | X | X |
  +---+---+---+---+
4 |   |   |   |   |
  |   |   | X | X |
  +---+---+---+---+
The actual color of the pieces don't matter, as long as they can be distinguished. The board may be checkered or not, as the players find aesthetically pleasing.

Either player may play first. Play consists of alternate turns, in which each player moves one piece one space orthagonally. There are no captures. No piece may be moved on two consecutive turns of the same player. Each player's corner squares (i.e., A1 and D4) may be entered or exited with a diagonal move; these are the only diagonal moves permitted. Victory is achieved in one of three ways:

  1. A player occupies the opponent's corner space.
  2. A player occupies any two of the opponent's starting spaces.
  3. A player manoeuvres the opponent into a position where the opponent has no legal move.

This game seems to me to be on the border between Chess Variant and non-chess game, based on the definitions given in Fergus Duniho's article.

Written by Jeff Zeitlin.
WWW page created: January 6, 2000.