Lines of Action strategically deep

After doing a couple of weeks on checkers and more recent variants of the game, I thought I'd stay on the classic 8X8 board this week as well.

The traditional board we have almost all played chess and checkers on at some point is a rather versatile gaming accessory with a number of designers using it as the playing field of their creations.

Claude Soucie is one of those designers.

And in his 1969 creation Lines of Action Soucie also made use of checker stones as the pieces.

So if you have a checkers set, you are ready to give Lines of Action a try.

The game is a two-player abstract strategy game with simple rules, lots of depth, and plays quickly enough that it has tonnes of replay value as well.

Play starts with each player having six pieces on the centre six squares on the rows facing each other. Think of black to the left and right, white taking the other two sides. Both players have 12 pieces in total to start play.

The object of the game is to bring all of one's checkers together into a contiguous body so that they are connected vertically, horizontally or diagonally.

Movement follows these simple rules;

Checkers move horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

A checker moves exactly as many spaces as there are checkers (both friendly and enemy) on the line in which it is moving.

A checker may jump over friendly checkers, but not over an enemy checker.

A checker may land on a square occupied by an enemy checker, resulting in the latter's capture and removal from the game.

And that is Lines of Action in a nice simple rule set.

The two keys to remember is a piece must move the number of spaces on its line, so not being able to jump over an opponent's piece can be limiting.

In terms of strategy capture is not always the best move. Each time you take an opponent's piece you reduce the number of pieces they must bring together in a group to win. A single piece left is a winning group too.

You need to capture with some thought to how that impacts the opponent's ability to group his pieces. Often a blocking piece is better than an outright capture.

What is so amazing about LOA is that it appears rather simplistic, and early games might go quickly until the light goes on to the deeper possibilities of blocking groups, and how to best achieve groupings which still allow movement.

An orphan piece on a line alone is limited in its ability to join up with a group on another part of the board.

Likewise a piece on a crowded line may not find an open space available to it to move at all.

This game is delightfully easy to learn, and brain burning to master. One of the best games out there, period. Give it a try.