Overview

Epaminondas is a two-player game where the player who moves the most pieces to the opposite edge of the board wins. You try to win by maneuvering your pieces to the opposite edge of the board while evading capture and blocking your opponent's freedom to move toward your board edge.

Board

The standard Epaminondas board size is 14x12. Igfip™ supports a range of smaller and larger board sizes as well as rectangular boards and obstructed spaces.

Initial Epaminondas board position.

You may find that adding a few carefully placed obstructions to the board creates more challenging game play.

Pieces

Each player starts with a number of pieces equal to twice the number of board columns (e.g., 28 pieces on a 14x12 board). This number changes throughout the game as a result of captures. A player's pieces start the game filling up the first two board rows on the player's side of the board.

Rules

  1. White moves first.
  2. A single piece or a contiguous line—orthogonal or diagonal—of pieces may move across one or more empty spaces up to the number of pieces in the group.
  3. The direction of movement of a group of pieces must follow the direction created by the line forming the group. Therefore, a single piece may move one space in any direction. But a group of two pieces vertically adjacent may move only forward or backward vertically.
  4. At the end of a move, the lead piece of a group may land on the lead piece of an opposing group only if the number of contiguous opposing pieces along the line of movement is less than the number of pieces in the moving group. When doing so, all of the pieces from the opposing group are captured and removed from the board. If the number of contiguous opposing pieces along the line of movement is greater than or equal to the number of pieces in the moving group, then the move is invalid and cannot be made.
  5. When a piece reaches the farthest row at the opposite edge of the board (called a crossing), it can no longer be moved and remains in place for the rest of the game unless it is captured.
  6. After a player makes a crossing, the other player must make a crossing on his next move. If the other player does not do so, he loses the game. If it becomes impossible for either player to lose, the game ends in a draw.