Jarmo (1227)

Overview

An old Tatarian legend says that Batu Khan, Mongol leader and a grandson of Genghis Khan, always took an extraordinary board game along when he had gone to a war, and carefully hid this game from all trespassers. Batu Khan usually played one game before a battle, just to get into a right warrior mood. The legend does not specify any particular game but it was most likely Jarmo, an old battle-and-race Tatarian game where players are expected to have concentration, observation and imagination.

The goal of this game is to reach opponent's first row with as many own archers as possible. However, the winning strategy is more complicated than simple moving pieces towards opponent's base, it will be described in the next sections. Likewise at Tank Battle, the player who gets more points at the end of a game, wins.

How to capture opponent's pieces

If an archer moves to a circle occupied by an opponent's archer, this enemy piece is captured and immediately removed from the board. An archer that captures at least one enemy is marked by a small black (white) line. It is important to know which archers have captured enemies when the "loop" rule is used.

How to finish the game

The game is finished if one player moves all their non-captured archers to the opponent's first row. At this moment, the final score is calculated and the player with more points wins. In case of a tie, the game is a draw.