How to play
Each side has twelve pieces on a 6 × 8 pond, with two patches of reeds in the middle that nobody can enter. You can see the ranks of your own pieces but not your rival’s, until they fight.
The pieces are a Nest, two Traps, a Sneak (rank 1), two Darts (2), two Diggers (3), and one each of ranks 4, 5, 6 and 7. Before play, swap your pieces around your two home rows however you like.
On your turn, move one piece one square up, down or across. Darts can slide any distance in a straight line over open water, but a Dart that slides more than one square gives away its rank. Move onto a rival piece to fight: both ranks are shown, the higher one wins and the lower one is removed, and equal ranks are both removed. A Sneak that attacks the 7 beats it. Anything that attacks a Trap is lost, except a Digger, which clears the Trap away. Nests and Traps never move.
Capture your rival’s Nest to win. If you can’t move any piece on your turn, you lose. After 300 moves without a winner, it’s a draw.
Tips
A piece that has moved can’t be the Nest or a Trap, so the pieces that never move are the ones to watch, and the ones to send a Digger at. Keep your 7 out of fights with unknown pieces that haven’t moved. Darts are cheap scouts: slide one into an unknown piece to find out what it is.