Crossings a game that deserves play time

I recently posed a question with the Abstract Nation on Facebook asking what were three games players preferred on an 8x8 checkerboard.

Not surprisingly there was a lot of commonality in answers and IMHO a few gems missed.

So over the coming weeks I’ll offer a few short reviews of what I see as the best games to be played on an 8x8 checkerboard with the added constraint you have only two sets of 24 pieces – basically you buy two matching common checker sets.

This is #15.

Talk about a game that seems like it was created for ‘Project 8x8 & 48’

Crossings by designer Robert Abbott is actually far from a new game. In fact this is actually one of the older games in the ‘Project’ dating back to 1969, clearly making it a vintage game being more than 50 years old.

Interestingly, Crossings is quite obviously the root for the highly touted Epaminondas released by the same designer in 1975 with the same basic ideas involved albeit on an expansive14x12 board.

In pure abstract strategy terms Epaminondas is arguably a deeper game, but it is also more inaccessible – meaning it is more difficult to get your head around play on the big board whereas Crossings is a simpler game to absorb, while still offering a nice challenge.

Crossings has had its share of press too including being published in Sid Sackson's A Gamut of Games and Stephen Addison's 100 Other Games to Play on a Chessboard.

Each player starts with 16 pieces in the two rows closest to them.

The object of the game is to reach the opposite side of the board with a piece, while preventing the opponent from doing the same, by moving checkers in ‘phalanx style.

As noted Crossings is an ancestor of Epaminondas, but with two significant differences;

*When phalanxes collide, only the front piece is captured. This is huge because in the big brother game you can lose whole swathes of pieces and feel devastated. Here there is a more subtle give and take in-game.

* Successfully ‘crossed’ pieces are immobile and can't be captured.

Movement has a group; a series of one or more same-coloured stones adjacent to one another in a line (diagonal, horizontal, or vertical). A stone may belong to one or more groups. (From Wikipedia);

*A player may move a single stone, an entire group, or a subgroupA group consisting of a single stone may move one space diagonally or orthogonally into an empty square.

*A group must move along the line which defines it. It may move a number of spaces equal to the number of pieces in that group.

*When part of a group is moved (a subgroup), it must move along the line which defines it. It may move a number of spaces equal to the number of pieces in the subgroup.

*When a subgroup is moved it must involve one of the end stones.

*Pieces may not move onto an occupied square.

Capturing an enemy stone;

* If the first stone in a moving group encounters a single enemy stone, the group's movement stops there, and the enemy stone is captured.

* If the first stone in a moving group encounters an end stone of an opponent's group, it can capture that stone if the opponent's group is smaller.

* If it cannot capture the end stone because the opponent's group is the same size or larger, it is not allowed to move on to that square.

End of the game;

*A player possibly wins the game if they get a stone on the home row, or row furthest from their side. If the opponent cannot get a stone of their own onto the first player's home row in the next move, the first player wins. Otherwise, those stones are ‘locked’; they cannot be moved or captured. The next attempt at crossing, as this is called, will determine the winner (unless it, too, is immediately followed by a counter-crossing, and so on).

It is the locking of pieces, and the ability to respond with a follow-up Crossing which make it feel like you can comeback and win late, keeping you focused here.

This is an ideal ‘Project’ offering, and very much worth playing.