Le zug 1988

Le zug is played on the dark squares of a 17x17 board (the four edge squares must be dark). A game starts with 12 pieces per player. Nine pieces of each color are placed on the first and the last row. In the first move (each player's first turn) the players put their three remaining pieces on the row next to their other pieces in any order they want them. After that players move at their turn one of their pieces diagonally forward to an adjacent empty square. Players also can jump over their own pieces or over those of their opponent (even combining both colors) similar to Halma but only diagonally forward. However, they don't have to jump, if they don't want to, and they can stop a jumping move anywhere, not making the largest jump possible. After the last jump they are allowed to move the piece, which did the jump, one square diagonally forward to an adjacent empty square. Again, this is not mandatory. No pieces are ever captured and the jumped pieces remain untouched.

The first four rows of each player are called their "railway station" ("gare" in French; "Bahnhof" in German). Players are not permitted to enter their opponent's railway station, before they have vaca­ted their own one. After a player has entered all of his pieces into the opponent's railway station, he is allowed to move or jump backward to reach the final goal position, but only as long as all of his pieces remain in the opponent's railway station.

The object of the game is to place nine pieces on the last row and the remaining three pieces anywhere on the penultimate row, that is to recreate a valid start position on the opponent's side of the board.

The name of the game is French and German mixed together ("le" is the masculine French article; "zug" means train in German). The game is meant to celebrate friendship between the French and the German peoples after centuries of wars fought between them. It is related to Halma and Salta. Le zug was first described in the book "Le livre de tous les jeux" (Edition Solar), which was published in France on January 1, 1989.