LASCA

Copyright (c) 1911 Emanuel Lasker 

This game is played on a 7x7 square board with the following setup:

 

TURN - On each turn, each player moves a friendly stack. The color of the piece at the stack's top (called the commander), determines ownership. The commander movement determines the stack's movement. Commanders can be soldiers (the starting pieces) or officers. The enemy pieces on a stack are called prisoners. A soldier can move diagonally forward to an empty cell, as in draughts. When it reaches the last row, it is promoted to an officer. A officer can move forward and backwards to diagonally adjacent empty cells. Capture is mandatory and multiple. Players must choose their capture sequence, it is not mandatory to maximize the number of capturing pieces. All pieces captures by the checkers short leap.  The captured piece is not removed from the board, but is picked up under the attacker as a prisoner as it leaps over it. If this piece is a stack, it will only lose its commander. A piece may not attack the same stack twice in the same move. Officers in prison do not lose their status, which may be reused if they are later released. GOAL - Loses the player with no valid moves.

Notice that it is not possible to have an alternation of colors in a column.

	An example White plays a forced capturing sequence. The Officer after being captured, maintained its status when released.
	An example Black's move. He must capture the white soldier, loosing all pieces on the next move.

Check the Game of Lasca website for more information. Some variants:

• PASTA (by Alvin Paster) where the difference is that no single token are promoted by reaching the last row. A stack is promoted if commanded by two pieces of the same color. The object is to be the first to place a piece on the last row. If a promoted piece is taking, thereby landing on the last row and obliged to continue taking, the game is not over.
• GOMONY (by Harvey Klein) is played on a 8x8 board. The soldier and officer pieces are marked on the side (in Laska, the stack commander hides the type of the pieces below it).
• MyLaska (by Karl Scherer) where stacks can only have two stones. Any other jumped enemy piece is captured and removed from play.

Lasca is inspired in an older Russian game, Bashnya.