Your objective in Katarenga is to get two of your figures past the opposing baseline. That may sound easy — but your opponent is flexible and dangerous. The abilities of the playing figures change from one move to the next. Only if you realize the advantages of the division of four possible actions, make clever use of the different strengths, and plan ahead can you outsmart your opponent through tactical play and thus win the game.
Katarenga is a two-player abstract consisting of a variable board, 16 pawns, and rules of movement derived from Chess. Each pawn’s move is governed by the colour of the square it moves away from (red = rook, yellow = bishop, green = knight, blue = king). For each game the board is constructed from four double-sided quarterboards, each of which can be placed either way up and any way round, yielding a total of over 24,000 different 8x8 boards. In the basic game your aim is to get two of your pawns to the opposite side without being captured. The same equipment can be used for playing a variety of other games with the same rules of movement and capture. Can you invent more?
