LILYPAD

Copyright (c) 2001 Jonathan A. Leistiko

This game is played on an 8x8 square board, with the following setup:

 
  • KING DROP - Each player swaps one of his soldiers with a King.
  • MOVE - All pieces move like checkers stones, i.e., move to an adjacent diagonal forward empty cell.
    • Soldiers cannot move to the last row.
  • CAPTURE - All pieces may  jump (and capture) an opponent enemy stone (landing on the immediate and opposite empty cell). 
    • Captures are mandatory 
    • Captures can be multiple (maximum capture is not mandatory).
  • SWAP - Instead of moving, the King may swap positions with an adjacent friendly soldier. 
    • Swaps may be multiple.
    • Capture take precedence over swapping.
    • After the swaps, the board position must be different that it was at the beginning.
  • GOAL - Wins the player that moves his King into the last row. 
    • If both Kings are captured, the game is a tie.
 
An example

Black moves g5 to cell [1]. Green must capture g2:e4. Then Black must capture f5:d3 and d1:f3. Then Black swaps b3 > c4 > d3 and has a winning path for his Black King.

From Lilypad's old page webpage:

Usually I write this section immediately after writing the game, but it's been several weeks since I wrote these rules. With the Sluggy Freelance checkers variants and other checkers variants that I've been working on recently, I've had checkers on my mind a lot lately. I think that the initial idea for Lilypad first came to me while setting up a magnetic checkers / backgammon / chess set for a checkers variant test when I looked at the chess pieces; I figured that there had to be a way to use checkers and chess pieces in the same game. Lilypad is the result.

The banner art and thumbnail for Lilypad were created by Cathleen Heard of Smart Eye Design. Thank you Cathy! Thanks to Ben Gibbs and Sharon for playtesting.

The Lilypad story is just spun from thin air. Starting with Psi Squad, continuing with Lilypad, and for the forseeable future, I'm going to start each game with a Story section. The stories frame the games nicely and make them easier to grasp, I think.

Although I haven't seen this game ever before, it seems so simple to me and uses such readily available pieces that I'd be surprised if someone hasn't thought of it before. If you know of or discover an identical game that predates Lilypad, then please let me know so I can properly acknowledge it. Thanks!

* Oh, by the way... If little sprites dancing on turtles and frogs is too fey for you, then just pretend that you're futuristic gladiators battling on hover drones over a pit of red-hot magma. That should get your testosterone pumping.