Description
Also called nei-pat-ko-no. Features a handcrafted wood base and cover with wood pegs. Peg colors vary. Measures about 7.5" square and made in our Hudson, Florida shop.
The origin date of this game is unknown, with some dating it to medieval times. It was first described in English by the ethnographer Stewart Culin in 1895.
Goal: Capture the other player's pieces and reduce to one. Another way to win is to immobilize the other player's pieces so that they cannot move or capture.
Rules 1. Players decide what color pegs to play, and who goes first.
2. The board is completely filled with the 16 pegs in the beginning. Each player's pegs are set up on their half of the board. During play all moves must be orthogonal (not diagonal); ie, left, right , forward or back.
,3. Each player takes turns by either jumping over one of their own pieces onto an opponent's piece to capture the opponent's piece, or by moving orthogonally to an adjacent empty point. Since the board is filled up in the beginning and hence no vacant holes, the first move by the first player will be a capturing move.
A capturing move requires a player's peg to jump over one of his own pegs and land on an enemy piece which is then removed from the board. A player cannot jump over an enemy piece to make a capture; the piece jumped over must be his own. To make such a capture, all three pieces must be in a straight line of three, with the enemy at the end. As is the case with non-capturing moves, diagonal captures are not allowed.
4. Only one capture can be made at a time; there are no multiple jumps as in some other games. Captures are not compulsory; you can opt to move a piece to an open adjacent orthogonal space.
If a player has captured all his opponent's pieces, then he has won the game. In practice, if a player has reduced his opponent to one piece then he has already won the game, as the opponent can make no further captures. If a player has pieces left but no legal move, he is blocked in and has lost the game.