Chase
Chase Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- An 81-hex gameboard; its center space is called the fission chamber.
- 10 red dice.
- 10 blue dice.
- Carrying case
Setup
One player plays blue and goes first; the other plays red. Place the gameboard between you with a CHASE logo to each player's left, then set up your dice as depicted below (keep your 10th die nearby):
Each player lines up 9 dice along their own edge of the board, one per hex, with speeds 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 from one side of the board to the other (the pips on top of the row sum to 25). The 10th die of each color is kept off the board, ready to be used as a spare when its owner splits a die in the fission chamber.
Gameplay
(most bold terms are detailed further below)
On your turn, you must either make two of your adjacent dice transfer speed, or move one of your dice according to the following rules:
- It must move its full speed (the pips on top of it).
- It must move in a straight "orthogonal" line (through the hex sides, not the corners), in any of the 6 directions.
- It cannot move through a space with a die in it.
- It cannot move through the fission chamber.
- It can wrap around the left/right side of the board.
- It can ricochet off the near/far edge of the board.
- It can end its move in a space with an enemy die to capture the enemy die.
- It can end its move in a space with a friendly die to bump it. Bumping can always, in turn, result in a capture or another bump.
- It can end its move in the fission chamber to split.
Transfer Speed
Transfer 1 or more speed from one of your dice to another one of your dice that is adjacent to it, as long as neither die would go below 1 or above 6 speed.
Wrap Around
The layout of the board is as if it were on a cylinder, such that the left and right edges of the board are connected. A hex on the left is adjacent to the same-row hex on the right. A half hex on the left is the same space as the same-row half hex on the right. A die in a half hex is considered to be in both halves of that hex.
Ricochet
A die moving to the near or far edge with more speed than it takes to reach the edge will reflect off the edge (angle of incidence equals angle of reflection) and continue its move.
Capture
When your opponent moves a die by exact count onto a space occupied by one of your dice, your opponent captures that die, removing it from play. The speed from the captured die must be absorbed by your slowest die still in play (your choice if there are several tied for slowest), in order to keep your team's total speed at 25. If that die reaches 6 speed without absorbing all of the speed, repeat the procedure with the difference until the team's total speed is 25 again.
Bump
When you move a die by exact count onto a space occupied by one of your dice, you bump the latter die 1 space in the same direction. This bumped die, in turn, may capture or bump a die sitting in its target space. A chain of bumps continues until a die captures an enemy die or lands in an empty space. Ricochet applies during bumps. You cannot bump a die into the fission chamber. A move that would cause this to happen is illegal.
Split
When you move a die by exact count onto the fission chamber in the middle of the board, it splits into 2 dice half its speed (if possible) and reflects the resulting dice outward 1 space. The 3 paths look a little like a simple, 3-line arrow. If the die landing on the fission chamber is odd, the higher-numbered die always goes in the leftward direction, relative to how the original die entered the fission chamber.
In order to split the original die, use either your 10th die or one of your dice that has been captured to be the second "half" of the die. If you have no such spare die, or if the original die was a 1, the original die simply emerges unchanged on the leftward path and nothing emerges on the rightward path.
The two "halves" emerging from the fission chamber behave as if they were just bumped. That is to say that each can capture an enemy die in its target space or bump a friendly die in its target space (possibly chaining further bumps).
End of the Game
When you are down to 4 dice, you will no longer be able to maintain your team's total speed of 25, and you lose the game.