NETWORK

Copyright (c) 1984 Knut-Michael Wolf

This game is played in the following 13x13 square board:

 

BATTERIES - The neutral stones (red in the diagram) that allow pieces to move. A player controls a battery if he has at least as many friendly stones as the enemy on diagonal adjacent cells. TURN - On each turn, each player executes two sequences: First - move one or more friendly stones (called robots). A robot only moves orthogonally forward or sideways always a pair of cells (meaning that robots can never move to cells occupied by batteries) to an empty cell or to a cell occupied by an enemy robot (which is captured). Robots may also jump orthogonally adjacent friendly robots and landing on the immediate next cell (always by pairs of cells!) which must be empty or occupied by an enemy robot (which is captured). However, these moves have a cost: Move N pairs of cells (on a straight line) - N credits Capture an adjacent enemy robot - 2 credits Jump - 2 credits Jump and capture - 4 credits The available number of credits to a certain robot is the number of adjacent controlled batteries. On each turn, each battery can only be used to activate one robot (if the player is moving lots of robots, it is best to temporarily mark them during the turn). Second - move zero or more controlled batteries. A battery makes orthogonally jumps, landing on an empty cell. If a battery would land on a cell occupied by a battery, the jump must continue until it reaches an empty cell. GOAL - A player wins if half of his remaining robots are on the last row (the 12th row), or the adversary cannot move at least one robot.

Again, notice that robots will never occupy the same cells as batteries. Every move is made over pairs of cells.

Some examples The black piece at b10 cannot move (it does not control any battery). The black piece at l12 controls 2 batteries and so may jump over j12 landing on h12. The black piece at j10 only controls 3 batteries (the battery at i9 is adjacent to two white robots). So, he cannot jump over j8 to capture j6, but he can capture j6. The battery at k3 can move to k1, g3 or k13

Check http://www.kmwsspielplatz.de/netzwerk-e.htm for more details and the original presentation.