A Game for Two Players. Third Edition
‘The muster-place be Lanrick-mead.’
1. The game requires a chess-board, five white and five black men, and something, such as a coin, with which to mark a square. The twenty-eight border-squares form ‘the border’: the other thirty-six form ‘the field.’
2. The men are moved like chess-queens, that is, along any line of squares, straight or slanting.
3. The mark may be set on any square in the field. The marked square forms, with the surrounding eight, a ‘rendezvous,’ into which both Players try to get their men: it counts as a vacant square, so that a man may be moved into or over it.
4. When playing for a rendezvous, he who plays first may not move in that turn more than two squares: in any other turn a Player may not move more squares than he has men on the board. He may move all these squares with one man, or may divide them among two or more men. He may move a man more than once in one turn, provided it be along the same line of squares.
5. He who begins sets on the border one of his men: the other does the same, and so on alternately. The Player named first in this Rule then sets the mark, taking care that none of his men are in the rendezvous, and that he cannot, in one turn, move them all in. Both then play for this rendezvous, he who did not set the mark playing first.
6. As soon as either Player has ‘won’ the rendezvous, i. e. has all his men in it, he takes off the board some one of his adversary’s men who is not in, and moves to the border, in accordance with Rule 2, all others of his adversary’s men who are not in and not already on the border.
7. Then, if the Players have unequal numbers of men in the field, he who has most makes the numbers equal by moving to the border one or more of his men.
8. Then he who has fewest men on the board, or in case of equality he who lost the last rendezvous, moves to the border one of his men, unless all be already on it: the other does the same, and so on alternately. The Player named first in this Rule then sets the mark as in Rule 5, and the game proceeds as before till one Player has taken four of his adversary’s men, which wins the game.