So I was going through one of the Geeklists I created at www.boardgamegeek.com recently and this game popped out at me.
The list covers what I consider the top-100+ abstract strategy games to play. The list fluctuates from time-to-time as my interest in a game changes, the current top-rated game being Arimaa.
Down the list a bit, at 26, is Gounki.
Never heard of it?
That's not surprising, but it is also a pity.
The game was created by Christophe Malavasi in 1997, and at least according to the BGG database Gounki is his only game.
At least Malavasi hit the mark with his lone creation.
Gounki is a game for two players that is played on a standard 8X8 chessboard using two kinds of pieces, round pieces and square pieces, which can be stacked during play to form combined pieces.
The game is won by the first player who manages to have any of his pieces reach past the last rank of the board. In that respect it is a race game akin to Breakthrough (a fine game in its own right).
Each player starts with eight square pieces and eight round pieces. The round pieces move diagonally forward, the square pieces orthogonally forward or left, or right. Single pieces do not go backwards.
But one of the neat things about Gounki is the power achieved through stacking pieces.
If, on the destination square of a move, a piece of the same side is already present, the moved piece is put on top of the former, the two pieces becoming stacked and thereafter forming a combined piece.
Combined pieces combine the powers of the simple pieces which they're made. As an example two round pieces stacked together can move two spaces.
A stack can be a maximum of three high.
Once stacked, the pieces can be seeded across the board to dismantle it.
There is capturing in Gounki. Any opponent's piece on the target square of a move is captured.
The captured piece is lost and removed from the board for the rest of the game, so the loss of a stacked piece can turn a game.
A second cool aspect to Gounki is that pieces bounce off board edges. Pieces with a range of two squares (or more) in a single move may bounce on the boundaries of the board.
The bounce moves add a definite level of strategy to play.
Overall, Gounki is a great game, which plays quickly, and which can easily be fashioned from pieces from other games; checkers for round and chess pawns for square pieces as an example.
Give this one a try; it'll be worth the effort.
Full rules with diagram examples can be found at http://rvo.pagesperso-orange.fr/gounki/en/rules.html
