OBONTO

Copyright (c) 2001 McGuire Brothers

This game is played on the following 9x9 square board:

There are also 12 friendly stones for each player and 8 neutral stones.

TURN -  On each turn, each player must move one of his friendly pieces. The Lion (stack of size 1) moves to an adjacent empty cell. The Zebra (stack of size 2) orthogonally jumps one cell and must land on the immediate cell (which must be empty). The Camel (stack of size 3) orthogonally jumps a line of two cells and must land on the immediate cell (which must be empty). After the piece has moved, the initial cell is removed from the board. The Zebra and Camel can turn around a corner (make a 90º turn). Jumps can be over stacks (of either color) but not over removed cells. GOAL - The winner is whoever stalemates the adversary. The winner then continues to move until he is stalemated, winning one point for each extra move. When the game if over, the players should insert all removed cells, and start a new game with the pieces at the previous game final position. The loser starts.

 

An initial move Black started by moving d9 to a9. Then White moved his Zebra to e3. Black's next turn was f9 to f8.  Notice that all moves removed one cell.

I wish to thank Pierre Lackovic for pointing an error in the jump rule (pieces cannot jump over removed cells).