LIBERO

Copyright (c) 1984 Alfred Schnitger

This game, a kind of abstract football, is played on the following board with the following setup:

There's also a special piece, the ball, initially off board.

GOAL CELLS - The three leftmost (rightmost) cells in the board. Each player owns the cells of his side. TURN -  On each turn, each player may (optionally) move one of his pieces and (optionally) move the ball as many times he wants (the move/pass order is irrelevant). The pieces: The libero slides (orthogonally or diagonally) over a line of empty cells. The soldier slides diagonally over a line of empty cells. The goalkeeper moves like the libero, except it cannot escape its area (the rectangle with 3 columns and 5 lines, around its initial position). Any piece may be stacked with the ball. The ball moves like the libero and may be passed from one friendly piece to another. If a piece moves to an adjacent (orthogonal or diagonal) cell of an opponent piece with the ball, the moving piece gets the ball (and then, may pass it to a friendly piece). No piece (including the ball) may jump or capture. SCORE - When the ball moves into one of the opponent's goal cells, the player scores one point. The first player that gets three points, achieves one set (resetting the points score to 0-0). After each point, the pieces are placed in their initial setup. The ball belongs to the player that lost the previous point, which is stacked on the soldier near the board center (I5 or L5 soldier). At the beginning, the players decide who starts and that player stacks the ball over his center soldier (again I5 or L5). GOAL - Wins the player that achieves two sets.

 

An example Blue's turn. The ball is carried by the Blue soldier at q6 (the black soldier in the diagram). Blue can score a point by passing the ball to the soldier at n9, then pass it to j9 which may move to [1] and finally move the ball to [2]. The cells marked [3] represent the blue goalkeeper moving zone.

I wish to thank Dieter Stein for translating me information about this game. I'm not sure about these rule set, especially the goalkeeper area.