Diplomats 1985

"A Bloodless Battle for Two Players"

The premise (from the magazine write-up): "If chess is an abstraction of war, how differently might the game have evolved in a world where war was unknown? Perhaps a strategy game like this one is played on some peaceful planet, where a nation can conquer its neighbor not by war but by infiltrating its citizenry with enough key people to gain political control."

Besides the board, each player needs markers to represent seven emigrants and four diplomats (two consuls, one negotiator, one ambassador). Emigrants can move one space in any direction; diplomats can move any number of spaces in any of the (eight) directions. Diplomats have special powers which, dependent on their type, affect the movement of emigrants. No piece ever captures another.

The object of the game is to move all seven emigrants into the embassy, just beyond the opponent's end of the board.