Lords and Vassals 2012

Lords and Vassals is a 2-player game on an 8x8 board. Each side has 8 Lords (pawns) and 8 Vassals (checkers). Setup is done by your opponent, not you: White arranges Black's pieces on Black's back two rows and vice versa, then the board rotates 180 degrees so everyone ends up facing the layout that was set for them — so nobody ever chooses or knows their own starting position in advance.

Black moves first. Each turn, Black makes 5 moves and White makes 4, every turn, for the whole game — this is a permanent asymmetry, not a one-time bonus, added to offset a small recurring edge White otherwise holds from always responding last. A move is either a step to an adjacent empty square, a jump over an adjacent same-type enemy piece into the empty square beyond it (jumps never capture), or a Lord moving onto an adjacent Vassal to pin it. No piece can occupy the same square twice in one turn, including its own starting square. Jumping, unpinning, or completing a capture uses up the rest of that piece's turn, though its owner can still spend remaining moves on other pieces.

A pinned Vassal can't move until its Lord unpins it by stepping off to an empty adjacent square; a Lord can't pin a second Vassal until it frees the first, and no player may have more than two Lords pinning at once. Captures are custodian captures: an enemy piece is taken when two real friendly pieces flank it on directly opposite sides, or, if it's sitting in one of the four corner squares, when two real friendly pieces occupy its only two neighbors. The board edge itself never substitutes for a piece. Any combination of Lords and Vassals can flank any enemy piece. A capture only happens as the direct result of the move that forms it — so a Vassal freed by its pinning Lord getting captured isn't automatically captured too, even if it lands in an existing gap; but if unpinning a Vassal is what completes an existing sandwich around it, it's captured immediately as a result of that unpinning move. Win by capturing 5 enemy pieces or by leaving your opponent with no legal move on their turn.