Alquerque is a two players game of arabic origin. It is played with white and black stone on a quadratic board. The goal of the game is to remove the opponent's stone. When all the stones of the oppenent have been removed, the game is won.

Game Board

The game board has 5 × 5 nodes arranged in a rectangular grid as shown below:

A node may be free or occupied by a white or a black stone. Stones are never added to the board during the game play, but may be removed.

Initial Configuration

Initially, each player has 12 stones on the board arranged as follows:

Game Play

The players take turns making a simple or a capturing move. White is to start.

• A simple move consists of moving one of the players stones along a line to an adjacent empty node.
• A capturing move consists of jumping over an adjacent opponent stone to an empty node behind it. The opponent's stone is removed from the board. The capture may be continued by jumping over further opponent stones (possibly in different directions).
• A player can make a simple move, only if no capturing move is possible.

End of Game

The game ends when one of the players have no stones left or cannot make any legal move in which case the other player wins. If the players agree upon a draw, the player with the majority of the remaining stones wins the game.

Comments

The implementation of this game has an equal balance between modelling, graphics, and game play issues.

Options

You may choose to implement some of the following rule extensions which make the game more interesting.

• The board is extended to 7 × 7
• A stone must not be moved backwards (sideways is OK).
• A simple move may pass through a number of empty nodes along the line of movement.
• A capturing move may pass through a number of empty nodes along the line of movement before the capturing jump. This applies to continuation moves as well.