Skirmish 2025

Skirmish is a tactical board game for 2 players featuring bluffing, deception, and strategic maneuvering. Players command armies of five fantasy races - humans, gnomes, dwarves, elves, and trolls - each with unique abilities to defeat their opponents.

Quick Overview In Skirmish, players move their pieces on a hexagonal board, trying to either eliminate their opponent's king or infiltrate the enemy camp. What makes the game truly engaging is the disguise system - players can mask their pieces as different races to deceive their opponent.

How to Play Each turn is simple: move one piece to an adjacent empty hex. The complexity comes from the interactions between races:

Each race can kill one specific enemy race (e.g., trolls kill elves) Each race can scare another race, forcing it to flee

Players must carefully plan their moves, remembering that appearances can be deceiving due to disguises. When a disguised piece is killed, only the disguise is removed, revealing the actual piece underneath.

How to Win Victory can be achieved in two ways:

Eliminate your opponent's king Move any of your pieces into your opponent's camp

This dual victory condition creates tension and forces players to divide their attention between attack and defense.

Skirmish combines the accessibility of a simple move system with the depth of a chess-like tactical game, all enhanced by the unique bluffing element of disguises.

—description from the designer