Elevation
The game is played on a 6x6 grid with 'terrain' tiles stacked on every square. The 'board' is the inside of the box that the game comes in. Each player has six pieces: Two fish, two dragons and two samurai. Players take turns to play. To win, you must capture all of your opponents pieces.
Each turn:
Choose one of your pieces to play with. There are two basic things that every piece can do:
- Dig
- Means picking up a terrain tile from any square that is adjacent to the piece you are playing (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) and placing it back onto any other adjacent square.
- You may not place terrain onto squares that are occupied by another pieces.
- You may not remove terrain from squares that contain an enemy piece.
- You can remove terrain from beneath friendly pieces.
- Move
- The basic move is one square horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
- You may not climb up more than one vertical step as you move.
- You can drop down as many vertical steps as needed.
- If you are at least TWO steps higher than an adjacent enemy piece then you can move onto that square and capture it.
- Otherwise, you can only move into vacant squares
A "Basic Move" is to either dig, then move...or...move, then dig. The three types of game-piece can all do a basic move - but the Fish and Dragon have extra abilities:
- The Fish
- Can perform a basic move - but can instead:
- Dig, then move TWO squares - but only diagonally...or...
- Move TWO squares, diagonally - then dig.
- The Dragon
- Can perform a basic move - but can instead:
- Dig twice - but not move.
- Move twice - but not dig.
- Move upwards by two vertical steps instead of one - but not dig.
Game Over
The game is over when one player has no pieces left or is unable to make a move.
A stalemate (draw) happens when neither player wishes to move - or if you each undo the other player's move three times in a row.