SETI

Copyright (c) 1979 Hartmut Witt and Andreas Steiner, Hexagames

This game is played on the following 3x10 square board:


  • TURN -  On each turn, each player must do one of the following actions.
    • Move a Pharaoh (stack of size 3). He moves to an orthogonal or diagonal adjacent empty cell.
    • Move a Archpriest (stack of size 2). He jumps diagonally over a diagonal adjacent cell or like the chess Knight.
      • Pharaohs or a Archpriests can also move over a friendly empty ship.
    • Drop a ship (stack of size 1) from the reserve into an empty cell (except in the enemy base, i.e., the farthest column) or beneath a friendly Pharaoh or Archpriest.
    • Pick a friendly empty ship and return it to the reserve.
  • Capture - Captures by replacement, i.e., by moving a piece over an enemy one.
    • Captured Pharaoh and Archpriests change color and are placed in the player's home base (if that column is full, place it in the next column, with preference for the middle cell).
    • Ships can only be captured if alone. The capturer puts them in his own reserve for later drops.
    • A Pharaoh or a Archpriest over a ship cannot be captured.
  • GOAL - The winner is whoever moves his Pharaoh or an Archpriest to the enemy base and keeps it there for one turn (i.e., prevent an immediate capture after moving the piece into the enemy base).

Variant: use a 5x10 board, 2 Pharaohs  and 4 Archpriests each (no ships in this variant). Same goal, movement and capturing. Exception: captured pieces are out of the game - no reentering. Initial setup is not clear from the rules, but a suggestion from David Ploog is to start with a double APA setup on the first two columns.

I want to thank David Ploog for this game info. Some suggestions from him: After further playing I would say that the rules are a bit too strong for the defender. Also games are very quick. Swapping an A for a P seems like a bad idea.