Three Musketeers is an
abstract strategy
Abstract strategy games admit a number of definitions which distinguish these from strategy games in general, mostly involving no or minimal narrative theme, outcomes determined only by player choice (with no randomness), and perfect information. ...
board game
Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Many board games feature a comp ...
by
Haar Hoolim. It was published in
Sid Sackson
Sid Sackson (February 4, 1920 in Chicago – November 6, 2002) was an American board game designer and collector, best known as the creator of the business game ''Acquire''.
Career
Sackson's most popular creation is probably the business game ''Ac ...
's ''
A Gamut of Games
''A Gamut of Games'' is an innovative book of games written by Sid Sackson and first published in 1969. It 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 publish ...
.'' The game is notable in that, like the traditional
fox and geese
Fox games are a category of asymmetric board games for two players, where one player is the fox and tries to eat the geese / sheep, and the opposing player directs the geese/sheep and attempts to trap the fox, or reach a destination on the board. I ...
, 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.
Equipment
* Twenty-five
tokens (such as
checkers
Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...
or
poker
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...
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
Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu (; 9 September 1585 – 4 December 1642), known as Cardinal Richelieu, was a French clergyman and statesman. He was also known as ''l'Éminence rouge'', or "the Red Eminence", a term derived from the ...
's men ("the enemy"). The musketeer player sets up their tokens in two opposite corners and in the center space; the enemy places tokens in all remaining board spaces:
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
orthogonal
In mathematics, orthogonality is the generalization of the geometric notion of ''perpendicularity''.
By extension, orthogonality is also used to refer to the separation of specific features of a system. The term also has specialized meanings in ...
ly (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.
References
*Sackson, Sid. ''A Gamut of Games.''
External links
*{{bgg, 21861, Three Musketeers
Board games introduced in 1969
Abstract strategy games
Solved games
Cultural depictions of Cardinal Richelieu