Estrago

What is Estrago?

Estrago is a one versus one board game I designed as part of a major game but that can stand on its own two feet. I set out to design a fun, engaging and with a low skill floor but a high skill ceiling game, trying to make something similar to other board games like chess and checkers but being its own thing.

How to setup the Board

The game consist of a board, a chess clock set to 5 minutes per player, 6 player pieces (3 for each player) and 4 wall pieces (2 for each playter) set up like in the picture below.

A board of Estrago setup to play

How to play Estrago

The objective of the game is to get two of your own pieces in the enemy base, wich are the 3 dots closest to the other player. Taking turns and beginning with the player that has the blue pieces, each player is able to move one of its pieces to a connected space. You’re only allowed to move one space at a time unless jumping.

If your piece is on a space connected to another one, be it yours or your oponent’s, and there’s an empty spot behind the other piece you may jump it. If the piece you jumped is one of your oponent’s you have to return it to your oponent’s base, as far to the right as possible. If there’s no available space in the base the piece leaves the game for good.

If blue captures the red piece it would force the red player to play with just 2 pieces.

If there’s a space behind two connected pieces you can jump them, but only if the pieces are the same color.

Additionally, instead of moving a piece the players can spend their turn blocking one of the paths connecting two spots using a wall piece, making it so no piece can take that path, be it moving or jumping. These barriers cannot be removed or moved in any way. The only restriction to the wall pieces is that you can’t place them on the connections between your opponent’s base spots.

The blue player can no longer capture the red piece, because the path is blocked

Whenever a player has a turn the clock is running. As soon as they have played their turn they must use the same hand which has moved the piece on the board to press the button on the clock, stopping their own clock and starts it’s opponent’s. Whoever’s time runs out they lose.

Want to play Estrago?

If you want to tray the game for yourself you can download and print the board and the pieces from the images bellow.

Empty board for printing