While many games draw players in with fancy packaging, detailed game pieces and in-depth rules which take up multiple pages, there is still something to be said for the simplistic approach.
It is always fascinating to find games which are fun yet only take a fees checkers and a board to play.
Such is Martin Windischer’s 2003 game India.
The game takes only a 6X6 board, so any regular chess board can be used by simply ignoring the outer rows and columns.
From there player’s need 24 checkers each.
That’s it for materials.
The rules are almost as simple.
Players start with one piece on the first two rows closest to them (12 pieces in total).
The remaining 12 pieces begin the game in an off-board reserve.
On a player’s turn the have one of three actions available to them;
• Drop an off board stone over a friendly stack.
• Move a friendly stack to an (orthogonal or diagonal) adjacent empty cell.
• Capture an (orthogonal or diagonal) adjacent enemy stack with exactly one less stone than the moved stack.
If pieces are captured they are removed from play.
The goal of India is also startlingly simple; a player wins if he moves a stack of size one to the last row.
A player may also lose before the win condition is achieved by the opponent. A player with no stacks of size one, loses.
That’s it. The entire game in the shortest of reviews.
But that is why India is a delightful little find.
The game is simple to build, as it is not commercially available as a dedicated set, but anyone with basic checkers game play India.
Yet the game is different enough, as a stacking game, to be a great change of pace from checkers.
And, India is at least as deep in terms of strategy as checkers, possibly a bit deeper to be fair, and that too is welcome.
A great game to explore this summer, so give it a try.
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