SHOO

Copyright (c) 1999 David Andrew, Justin Kalef and Chris Kidd

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

HOME BASE - The 3x3 area where the player's travelers start. HORSE - A special neutral piece that can be mounted by travelers, see below.  First player has 4 horses off-board, second player has 5. A horse slides any number of empty cells on any directions - there is no jumping. A horse cannot enter on either home base. A horse is free if it is not mounted by any traveler. A horse can be dropped on any empty cell not inside a home base. The dropped horse - in the next move - is only free for the player that dropped it. After that, if it is not used, becomes free. A free horse can be retired, i.e., it can be removed permanently from the board. To do that, the player must have a traveler (mounted or not) adjacent to the retiring horse. TRAVELER - A single stone. A traveler can move to an adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) empty cell. After entering the adversary home base, a traveler cannot move out. A traveler can move into a cell occupied by a free horse, and become a mounted traveler.  A mounted traveler moves like the horse. A traveler can dismount a horse, by moving the traveler to an adjacent empty cell. The horse becomes immediately free! A traveler can capture a horse which is mounted by an adversary traveler if it adjacent to them. If so, he places the adversary traveler on an adjacent empty cell (from the horse's cell), mounts the horse and (optionally) moves out. SHOOING - If two friendly travelers are adjacent to an enemy traveler which is not mounted, then that traveler is shooed, i.e., the other player must move that traveler and remove the shoo. If the traveler cannot move to remove the shoo, the piece is removed from board, and must be dropped on any empty cell adjacent to his home base (which is not shooed). If this is still not possible, then the piece should be dropped on some adjacent empty cell from those adjacent to his home base, and so forth... A dismounted traveler cannot move into a shoo. If several shoos exists, the player must remove one per turn on his choice. A piece inside the adversary home base cannot be shooed! MOVE - On each turn, each player can do one of the following things: Remove a shoo Move a traveler (mounted or not) Move a free horse Drop one of his off-board horses Retire a free horse. Mount a traveler (i.e., moving it into a free horse) Dismount a traveler (i.e., moving it out of the horse) Capture a horse. GOAL - Wins the player that first occupies the adversary home base with his travelers.

An example The mounted traveler at i7 slides to cell [1] and shoos the black traveler. Since it must remove the shoo, it must move to the only empty cell adjacent to its home base, cell [2]. Shoo is the mechanism to avoid the drawish tactic of keeping one or more travelers inside its own home base.

Some variants proposed by David Andrew: You may wish to try out the following variants: i) playing with 7 rather than 9 horses; ii) when a piece has been hushed, either that you lose the move altogether or (worse) that the piece that is hushed is shooed off - to the player's stable; and iii) you keep the rule of safety, that prevents travelers in their home area being shooed (off), but allow travelers to leave the home area again, taking the risk that they will subsequently be shooed off, of course. Or, there may be other variants that occur to you.

For more information (including some examples), check this webpage.