How to play Martian Chess

Martian chess , how to play .

The object of the game is to score the most points .

There are three types of pieces , pawns which are worth one point drones which are worth two points and queens which are worth three points , lay out the board between two players and each player sets up their pieces like so each player controls their half of the board , which is called a zone .

The middle dividing line separating the two zones is called the canal .

Pick a player to go first , then turns alternate on your turn .

You must move any one piece on your side of the board .

Then your opponent goes ponds , move one space at a time in any diagonal direction .

Drones move one or two spaces at a time , either horizontally or vertically in a straight line .

Queens move any distance in a straight line , horizontally vertically or diagonally pieces may not jump over other pieces .

You may not move a piece to the same space as another piece on your side of the board .

If you move a piece to a space occupied by another piece on your opponent's side of the board , then you capture that piece and remove it from the board and place it next to you .

You always control all and only the pieces currently on your side of the board .

If you move a piece to your opponents side of the board , then it stops being a piece that you can control until your opponent moves it back to your side of the board .

You are not allowed to undo an opponent's move .

Meaning if your opponent moves a piece across the canal , you may not move it back to the exact same space on your next turn .

However , you could move it back on the turn after that one .

If you wanted , if you have no queens or drones on your side of the board , you can move two pieces together to combine them into one , a pawn and drone may be combined to make a queen and two pawns can be combined to make a drone .

This is called a field promotion .

If there is not a piece available to promote to , then you may not promote the game ends .

As soon as one player's zone is totally empty .

Each player adds up the points based on the pieces they've captured and the player with the most points wins .

If the game gets to a state of deadlock , any player may say during their turn , call the clock from that point on .

If seven moves go by without a capture , then the game ends and points are scored .

If a capture happens , then the seven move count starts over .

If the final score is a tie , then the player who ended the game is the winner .