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Three Musketeers (game)
Encyclopedia
Three Musketeers is an abstract strategy board game
by Haar Hoolim. It was published in Sid Sackson
's A Gamut of Games
. The game is notable in that, like the traditional Fox and geese, it uses the principle of unequal forces; the two players neither use the same types of pieces nor the same rules, and their victory conditions are different.
The game was strongly solved
in 2009 by Johannes Laire. It is a win for Cardinal Richelieu's men.
The players take turns moving one piece; the musketeer player starts. The rules are as follows:
The enemy wins if it can force the three musketeers to be all on the same row or column.
The musketeers win if on their turn they cannot move due to there being no enemy pieces adjacent to any musketeer and they are not all on the same row or column. As long as one musketeer can move, the game is not won.
Board game
A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...
by Haar Hoolim. It was published in Sid Sackson
Sid Sackson
Sid Sackson was a significant American board game designer and collector.His most popular creation is probably the business game Acquire...
's A Gamut of Games
A Gamut of Games
A Gamut of Games, written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969, contains rules for a large number of paper and pencil, card, and board games. Many of the games in the book had never before been published...
. The game is notable in that, like the traditional Fox and geese, it uses the principle of unequal forces; the two players neither use the same types of pieces nor the same rules, and their victory conditions are different.
The game was strongly solved
Solved game
A solved game is a game whose outcome can be correctly predicted from any position when each side plays optimally. Games which have not been solved are said to be "unsolved"...
in 2009 by Johannes Laire. It is a win for Cardinal Richelieu's men.
Equipment
- Twenty-five tokenTokenA token is an object of value, and may refer to:* In logic, computational linguistics, and information retrieval, a token is an instance of a type; see Type-token distinction...
s (such as checkers or pokerPokerPoker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
chips), twenty-two light and three dark. - A board marked out as a 5 by 5 grid.
Rules
One player takes the part of the three musketeers, the other of Cardinal Richelieu's men ("the enemy"). The musketeer player sets up his tokens in two opposite corners and in the center space; the enemy places tokens in all remaining board spaces:  |
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The players take turns moving one piece; the musketeer player starts. The rules are as follows:
- The musketeer player can move a musketeer to any orthogonally (non-diagonal) adjacent space occupied by an enemy; the enemy piece is removed from the game.
- The enemy can move one enemy piece to any orthogonally adjacent empty space.
The enemy wins if it can force the three musketeers to be all on the same row or column.
The musketeers win if on their turn they cannot move due to there being no enemy pieces adjacent to any musketeer and they are not all on the same row or column. As long as one musketeer can move, the game is not won.