Definitions

Struckle is an abstract strategy game for four players that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance.

Houses

The game has four sides, one for each player, which are called:

1. House of Tinted Blue
2. House of Tinted Green
3. House of Shaded Blue
4. House of Shaded Green

Therefore, the term house is a synonym of side in Struckle.

Pieces

Each player controls a set of four pieces, each representing one of the following archetypes:

1. Diva
2. Hero
3. Philosopher
4. Shadow

The color of the pieces reflects the house they belong to. However, a piece on the board can exist in one of two different states:

1. Demoted – which is the initial state of every piece, and
2. Promoted – which is a state that a piece can progress into during the game. Promoted pieces can also regress to their demoted initial state during the game.

Demoted pieces have a white background, whereas promoted piece have a gold background to emphasize their elevated status. Promoted pieces acquire a special power which nature depends on the specific archetype; the power is lost if the piece is demoted.

Struckle pieces are non-creatable and non-destructible, therefore at any moment in time there are always 16 pieces on the board: 4 Divas, 4 Heroes, 4 Philosophers, and 4 Shadows.

The board

Struckle is played on a board with 64 four squares arranged in an 8x8 grid made of eight rows and eight columns. Each square is uniquely identified by a set of coordinates, A-H for columns followed by 1-8 for rows.

Struckle board - coordinates have been added to this image for reference only

House squares

House squares are squares that belong to a specific house. They are easy to recognize on the board because they are represented in the color of the house.

Each house owns 12 squares on the board:

• 4 Home squares (H)
• 2 Goal squares (G)
• 6 Simple squares (S)

The following four diagrams illustrate the position of house squares for each of the four Houses in the game.

Tinted Blue squares

Tinted Green squares

Shaded Blue squares

Shaded Green squares

Home squares

Home squares provide the starting location of each piece in the game and, because of that, are rendered including an icon that acts as a reminder of the specific archetype they are associated with.

Home squares are sorted alphabetically by archetype’s name which facilitates remembering their order.

For every House, the home squares are sorted from left to right as in:

1. Diva (D)
2. Hero (H)
3. Philosopher (P)
4. Shadow (S)

Home squares are branded with the icon of the associated archetype

Game starting position

The following diagram shows a game’s starting position with each piece placed in its own home square:

Struckle: game starting position

Goal squares

Goal squares provide the means to end the game with a win. Struckle does not allow for a draw.

The first house to occupy both of their own goal squares wins the game.

The goal squares are located nearby the boar corners and on the opposite edge of the board respective to the starting point of the house (represented by its home squares).

A cross icon is rendered above the goal squares acting as an indicator of the square’s type. The following diagram clarifies where the goal squares are located on the board:

Goal squares: defining the win condition

Final position example

In the cutout example below the House of Shaded Green, which has its home square on the topmost edge of the board, won the game by occupying both of its goal squares at the bottom edge of the board with two of its pieces (the Philosopher on the left, and the Diva on the right).

Shaded Green wins by reaching both of its two goal squares

Protection from targeting

Targeting is a mechanic associated with the power of certain promoted pieces which allows them to apply their power on opponent pieces anywhere on the board with few restrictions. The most common of such restrictions is provided by house squares: a piece cannot be targeted by the power of an opponent’s promoted piece as long as it is standing on a square of its own house.

Promotion and demotion

Struckle pieces start the game in a demoted state emphasized by a white background and during the game can turn into a promoted state emphasized by a gold background and subsequently being demoted/promoted again, and again.

Promotion squares

A piece is promoted when it moves into one of the four gold squares (a.k.a. promotion squares) on the board. The squares are located at the center of the board as shown by the following diagram:

Struckle: promotion squares

Demotion squares

A promoted piece is demoted when it moves into one of the twelve red squares (a.k.a. demotion squares) on the board. The squares are located along the diagonals as shown by the following diagram:

Struckle: demotion squares

The turn

A turn in Struckle is structured into a main turn – the house turn – that rotates counterclockwise starting from the House of Tinted Blue. Each house turn is divided into four sub-turns – archetype turns – during which players can act on each of their four pieces following an ordered sequence mimicking the left to right order of the home squares. Each archetype turn is divided in two phases: movement phase and power phase, the latter only available to promoted pieces.

Let’s delve deeper into the structure of a turn to realize that is much simpler and easier to remember than it looks at first.

House turns

The diagram below illustrates the house turn which goes from the House of Tinted Blue, followed by the House of Tinted Green, followed by the House of Shaded Blue, before ending with the House of Shaded Green. After the House of Shaded Green completed their house turn, a new turn starts from the House of Tinted Blue, and so on.

House turns: counter-clockwise starting from Tinted Blue

Archetype turns

During a house turn, the acting house can play each of its four pieces in the following order which reflects the order of the home squares of the four archetypes:

1. Diva
2. Hero
3. Philosopher
4. Shadow

The following diagram illustrates such repeating four-step sequence while the house turn is passed on among the houses.

Archetype turns: also counter-clockwise starting from Tinted Blue

Archetype turn: phases

Once that the turn has been determined down to the archetype (example: House -> Tinted Blue, Archetype -> Diva), the player can finally use the specific piece (the Tinted Blue Diva, in the example) taking actions which are divided in two consecutive phases:

1. The Movement phase
2. The Power phase (if the piece is promoted)

Movement phase: 2-steps movement

In Struckle every piece can move up to two squares in any direction without any movement constraint except, of course, that the destination squares must be empty and adjacent to the piece’s current location.

To explicit the mechanics of such movement the movement itself is executed into two steps.

In the first step the piece can move into an empty square adjacent to its current location, in any direction – meaning vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

The second step works in the same way, the only thing changed being the piece new location after the first step. Hence, in the second step the piece can move into an empty square adjacent to its new current location, in any direction – meaning vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.

The following diagram shows the game initial position and the four options that the Tinted Blue Diva has during its first step of movement.

Example: Tinted Blue Diva's four options during its first step

The following diagram shows the seven options that the Tinted Blue Diva has during its second step of movement, assuming that during its first step it had moved into B6.

Example: Tinted Blue Diva's seven options during its second step

Right to skip

Struckle allows players to skip any action of any piece at the player discretion. Players might skip one step of the movement, or both, if they wish so. Players can also skip a power action during the subsequent power phase whenever available.

Since skipping an action is allowed, players can take from zero up to a maximum of 12 actions during their house turn – up to three for each piece, two-steps movement plus one power action each. Of course, the maximum number of actions (12) can be reached only if each piece is promoted.

Power phase

A power phase only happens if the acting piece is promoted. Demoted pieces have no power.

The power action of a promoted piece is specific to the piece’s archetype.

Diva's power: Diminish

In Struckle, each archetype’s power has a nickname.

The nickname of the power of a promoted Diva is Diminish.

Diminish can target a promoted opponent's piece anywhere on the board with a couple restrictions. When targeted by Diminish, a piece's state changes instantly from promoted to demoted.

The first restriction is due to the targeting nature of this power: as we have seen earlier, house squares provide protection from targeting, hence Diminish cannot be applied to pieces that are standing in squares of their own house.

Diminish’ second restriction is due to the nature of the promotion squares. If a piece is on a promotion square it cannot be demoted since, by definition, a demoted piece becomes promoted while standing on a promoted square. You might think of it as if Diminish actually demotes the piece which is then promoted again by standing on a promoted square.

Diminish in action

In the example below the Tinted Blue Diva can choose to Diminish one of two potential targets: the Shaded Blue Philosopher or the Shaded Green Hero, but cannot target the fourth promoted piece on the board, the Tinted Green Shadow, because it is currently located in a square of its own house.

Tinted Blue Diva can choose between two targets

The diagram below shows the position after applying Diminish to the Shaded Blue Philosopher: the targeted piece is no longer promoted, having been reverted to its demoted state.

Position after applying Diminish to the Shaded Blue Philosopher

Hero's power: Charge

Charge, the power of a promoted Hero, is the only one among the four powers in the game, which doesn’t require targeting a piece but rather, like a movement, the choice of a direction.

In order to apply Charge two requirements must be met:

1. An opponent’s piece must be in a square adjacent to the one in which is the Hero, in any direction, whether horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.
2. There must be an empty square behind the opponent’s piece in the direction defined from the Hero’s location toward the opponent’s piece location.

The resultant of applying Charge is that the Hero enters the adjacent square occupied by the opponent’s piece, and the opponent piece is moved backwards into the empty square which was “behind” its original location.

Charging can be thought as “targeting” the empty square behind an adjacent opponent piece and since the target is a square, or a direction, and not a piece, such power is not limited by the protection against targeting offered by the house squares.

Charge in action

The position described by the following diagram sees the acting promoted Tinted Blue Hero surrounded by eight pieces. Three of those pieces belong to Tinted Blue and, therefore, the hero cannot apply its Charge power in their direction. However, the other five pieces around the hero belong to opponents. All of them have an empty square behind them in the direction established from the Tinted Blue Hero toward the piece, making all such directions valid options for the use of the hero’s Charge power. The empty squares enabling the application of the Charge power are highlighted by the presence of a dotted circle inside the empty square.

Tinted Blue Hero has five options for Charge

Our example continues with the Tinted Blue Hero using its Charge power in the direction of the Shaded Blue Shadow, and the diagram below shows the position resulting from such action.

Both pieces moved diagonally one square away from their original position, in the same direction. The Shaded Blue Shadow ended up occupying the empty square which was “behind” its original position, which is why the presence of an empty square is a requirement to allow the application of the Hero’s power.

Position after applying Charge in the Shaded Blue Shadow direction

Philosopher's power: Brainwash

Brainwash, the power of a promoted Philosopher, allows to move one targeted opponent’s piece to a new empty square adjacent to it. It’s like if the opponent’s piece is given a 1-step movement action of one square in any direction but, in this case, it’s the Philosopher to decide which direction, and ultimately which square, the opponent’s piece will end up into. Since this power requires targeting, it is evident that it will not be applicable to opponent’s pieces that are located in their own house squares. This power can also have a promoted/demoted side-effect depending on the eventual location of the opponent’s piece.

Brainwash in action

In the example below, the Tinted Blue Philosopher has three options to exercise its Brainwash power (Tinted Green Diva, Shaded Blue Hero, and Tinted Green Hero). Brainwash has only three potential targets because of 12 opponent pieces on the board, nine of them are sitting in squares of their own houses, hence protected from targeting.

Tinted Blue Philosopher can choose among three targets here

Once the Philosopher decided to apply Brainwash to the Tinted Green Diva, it has seven options to choose from as destination of the opponent’s piece which are illustrated below:

Seven options for moving the targeted opponent's piece

Eventually, the Blue Tinted Philosopher decided to move the Tinted Green Diva into the demotion square. As a result of that, the opponent’s piece is no longer promoted as shown below in the final position of this example:

Position after "Brainwashing" the Tinted Green Diva

Shadow's power: Homegoing

Homegoing, the power of a promoted Shadow, can send a targeted opponent’s piece back to its home square. Since it requires targeting, this power cannot be applied to opponent’s pieces that are inside a square of their own house. Another limitation of this power is that the destination home square must be empty. Aside from these limitation, Homegoing is capable of sending an opponent piece back to its starting point no matter how far it got.

Homegoing in action

In the theoretical example below, the Blue Tinted Shadow has only one option to exercise its Homegoing power, the other 11 opponent pieces are all sitting in squares of their own houses. However applying Homegoing to such single option it’s crucial for the continuation of the game: Tinted Green has already occupied one of its goals squares and its promoted Hero is just one square away from occupying the second one – meaning victory for Tinted Green.

Homegoing has only one target in this position, a very important one

The diagram below shows the position after the Tinted Blue Shadow applied its Homegoing power to the Tinted Green Hero. The opponent piece ended up on its home square, far away from the second goals square of the Tinted Green house. Homegoing is indeed another very influential power in the economy of a Struckle game, perhaps the most influential of all!

Position after sending the Tinted Green Hero back to its home

A video example

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