Dameo

Dameo

Christian Freeling’s 2000 redesign of draughts, built to remove the drawishness of the classical game. Two mechanics do the work: men move in phalanxes, so a wall of men can advance as a unit, and capture is orthogonal while movement is not.

Setup

8×8 board, all 64 squares in play. Eighteen men per side in a trapezoid: the full back row a1–h1, six men on b2–g2, four on c3–f3.

Movement

A single man moves one square forward — straight ahead or diagonally forward. Never sideways, never backwards.

A line of men moves as one. A straight unbroken line of men of the same colour may slide one square forward along the axis it occupies, provided the square in front of the head of the line is vacant.

The net effect on the board is easier to see than the description: the rearmost man of the line relocates to the empty square just beyond the head. Wikipedia describes the same rule the other way round — a man jumping over one or more adjacent friendly men in a straight line — and the two produce identical positions.

Because the move must be both along the line’s own axis and forward, a horizontal line cannot make a linear move.

A king moves like a chess queen: any distance, any of the eight directions, unobstructed.

Capture

Capture is compulsory, and it is orthogonal for everything.

• A man captures an adjacent enemy piece forwards, backwards or sideways, jumping to the empty square directly beyond. Not diagonally.
• A king captures rookwise — along a rank or file only, at any distance, jumping a single enemy piece to any empty square beyond.

So men move diagonally but cannot capture diagonally, and kings move queenwise but capture rookwise. This inversion is the most commonly mis-implemented part of the game.

Majority capture takes precedence: where a player has a choice of captures, the one taking the largest number of pieces must be played. Unlike Frisian Draughts, this is a plain count — kings and men are worth the same.

Captured pieces are removed at the end of the turn, not during the sequence. During a multi-jump they remain on the board.

Promotion

A man reaching the opponent’s back row is crowned king.

Winning

A player with no legal move loses — whether through having no pieces left, or through every piece being blocked.

Attribution

Christian Freeling, 2000. Rules published at mindsports.nl by the inventor.