Clobber
Clobber Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
Clobber is played on a checkerboard, a grid of squares, with two colours of stones (white and black). The board size is not fixed by the designers. A 6 × 7 board is enough to show the features of the game, and a 10 × 10 board has become popular for play. The igGameCenter rules page gives a 5 × 6 board as the standard size. Other sizes can also be used.
Setup
Place the stones so that every square of the board is occupied, with one stone per square. Each stone's colour matches the colour of the square it sits on: white stones go on the white squares and black stones go on the black squares, so the stones form a checkerboard pattern.
Turns
Players take turns alternately. A player's turn consists of one move.
Moving (Clobbering)
On a turn, a player must pick up one of their own stones and move it into a square orthogonally adjacent to (horizontally or vertically next to, never diagonally) an enemy stone. The move captures the enemy stone: the enemy stone is removed from the board and the moving stone takes its place.
A move is legal only if it clobbers an enemy stone.
Ending the Game
The player who makes the last move wins. A player who has no legal move on their turn loses the game. No draws are possible.
Note: the designers' paper does not say which colour moves first. The igGameCenter rules page says that play begins with the player who controls the white stones, and the example in the designers' rules statement has Black to move. Agree on the starting player before play.
Variants
- Other board sizes. As noted above, the game can be played on any size of board. The designers' paper also describes the same rules on an arbitrary graph (any set of squares with adjacency), but play on a checkerboard is the standard form.
- Cannibal Clobber. The designers' rules statement describes a variant where a player may also capture their own stones. The rules for this variant are not given in the designers' statement and are not transcribed here.