King
The King moves one square in any direction, and can never be stacked.
Pieces & rules
Pieces
Rook
The Rook moves orthogonally, with no limit on distance.
Bishop
The Bishop moves diagonally, with no limit on distance.
Soldier
The Soldier moves one square diagonally forward, and becomes a Paladin on reaching the last row.
Paladin
The Paladin moves one or two squares orthogonally.
Guard
The Guard moves one or two squares diagonally.
Knight
The Knight moves in an L (two squares in one direction, then one to the side), and can jump over other pieces.
Ballista
The Ballista moves straight forward only, with no limit on distance, and becomes a Rook on reaching the last row.
Goal of the game
The game ends immediately when a player captures the opponent’s king. There is no checkmate.
Keres vs chess
Capture
A piece captures an opponent’s piece by moving onto its square, as in chess. Capturing a stack removes the entire stack.
Blocked paths
Pieces cannot pass through other pieces, except the knight.
Promotion
When a piece reaches the last row on the opponent’s side, a mandatory promotion takes effect: the soldier becomes a paladin, the ballista a rook.
Stacking
Pieces can be stacked to merge their movements: a stack moves by combining all the movements of the pieces that compose it.
The target piece must be reachable by the moving piece and must not already be stacked. The king can never be stacked.
A stack separates when only its top piece moves, according to its own movement.
Good to know
A piece that cannot move
A ballista only moves forward. With a friendly king, or a stack, right in front of it, it has no move at all and is blocked until that square changes.
A stack
A guard with a paladin on top moves like a guard and like a paladin.
Unstacking
Moving only the top piece, here the paladin, separates the stack. The piece underneath stays where it is.
