Viking Chess TaKu

Design by Daniel Bernsen for the SAZ design contest 2019.

Green Box Viking Chess Ta(ble) Ku(bb) is the Green Box table version of the popular outdoor game.

2-12 players

Ages 6+

10-20 minutes

### Components

18 white & 18 black cubes, 6 red & 6 blue cubes,

2 yellow cubes, 1 yellow meeple, 36 tiles

### Setup

The tiles are put in a frame of 8 tiles x 12 tiles. This is the “pitch”. Put the two yellow cubes in the middle of the pitch and place the „king“ (yellow meeple) with his feet on the two yellow cubes (see setup picture).

1-6 players form a team. Both teams choose two colours red or blue and black or white and get the corresponding cubes. The red/blue cubes are the „batons“ which will be flicked to bring down the warriors of the opponent.

The warriors are formed by stacks of three white/black cubes. So each team has 6 warriors. The warriors are placed in alternating turns in one‘s own side of the pitch. They are placed within the pitch = having a distance of at least half an inch (wide as a finger) to the tiles, the king and any other warriors.

Decide by chance which team starts placing the first warrior. This team will also be the starting player.

Distribute the red/blue cubes within your team. If you are only one player per team you get all six cubes. With two players, each gets 3 cubes. If you are three players each player gets 2 cubes. With four or five players you are free to decide who is going to flick two times. For six players there is one cube for everyone. Agree within your team in which order you will flick the cubes.

### How to play

In the agreed order the members of the first team put their red (or blue) cube on one tile of the base line (8 tiles) on their side of the pitch and flick them in order to knock down one of the warriors of the other team. For this it is sufficient that a warrior looses his “head” (= the upper of the three cubes).

If the cube stays within the pitch (including also the tiles) and knocks down an opponent warrior, the hit counts.

If the cube does not hit any warrior or leaves the pitch (beyond the frame of tiles), it was a miss – in this case a knocked down warrior is re-erected immediately.

Exception: If you knock down your own warrior by friendly fire, he stays down.

Attention: If you knock down the king when there are still warriors in your opponent’s half of the field, you loose the match immediately.

After all cubes of one team have been flicked, all correctly knocked down warriors are collected and placed by their team in the field of the opponent. The team is free to put them wherever they like in the opponent‘s side of the pitch.

Then, the second team flicks his cubes. But before knocking down a warrior of the opponent, they have to knock down first – if they are – their own warrior(s) in the opponent’s side of the pitch. If they succeed, their warrior is immediately removed from the pitch and put aside. In case they knock down an opponent warrior and there is still one of their warriors in the opponent’s field, this is a miss and the warrior is re-erected immediately.

After all cubes are flicked, it is again the turn of the first team.

Only the team which has no more warriors in the field of the opponent can try to knock down the king. The team who has knocked down the king first wins the match.

### End of the game

Play best of 3 matches. The looser team of the previous match is starting the next. The team winning two matches wins the game.