♞ Knights, Walls & Balls

Setup: Walls (5, each 3 tiles wide, drag to place horizontal or vertical) → Kings → Archers (5, must stand on your own wall) → Knights (5, within 5 squares of your king) → Cannons (3). A DMZ band around the middle is off-limits during setup — it disappears once play begins.

Placing: Drag a piece from the tray onto the board — green means you can drop it there, red means you can't. Clicking a square works too.

Each turn: 5 action points. Spend them however you like: one piece up to 5 steps, or several pieces one step each, any mix.

Movement: 1 square per point, any of 8 directions (tap a piece, then tap a square; on a mouse, you can drag it instead). Knights & King can't move onto/through walls. Archers can stand on walls (required to fire).

Melee: Move a Knight onto an enemy square to capture it (normal cost). Archers are purely ranged — they never capture by moving. The King cannot capture by moving into an enemy square — it can only move to empty squares.

Archer fire: 1 point, range 3, any direction, must be standing on a wall. Choose any square in range — units in the way, friend or enemy, don't block the arrow, but a wall does (and is never destroyed by it). You can't target your own side.

King's musket: 2 points, range 4, any of 8 directions, auto-hits the first unit in its line. Blocked by the first wall, unit, or cannon (crewed or not) in its path — a bare cannon blocks the shot but is never itself a target. After firing, the musket needs to reload — it can't be fired again on the King's very next turn, but is ready the turn after that.

Cannon fire: 1 point, range 5, straight lines only (N/S/E/W). Needs a crew (any of your units standing on it). Choose any square in range — units and cannons in the way, friend or enemy, don't block the shot, but a wall does: it's hit and destroyed first, and the shot never reaches past it. You can't target your own side. Only cannon fire destroys cannons — hitting a manned enemy cannon kills the crew and the cannon together; hitting an unmanned one just destroys it. Firing a cannon ends your turn (unspent action points are lost).

Cannons and capture: stepping onto your own cannon crews it. Stepping onto an enemy cannon with no crew captures it for you — any unit, including an Archer or the King. A Knight that kills a manned enemy cannon's crew by moving onto it captures the cannon too, in the same move; an Archer or the King's musket that kills the crew just leaves the cannon standing there, uncrewed, still belonging to its original owner. Move Cannon (crew and cannon step one orthogonal square per point together) can never land on a wall.

Casualties: if a wall is destroyed while an archer is standing on it, the archer goes down too.

The clock: counts down 10 minutes of play to the missile (setup doesn't count), and pauses if either player disconnects (or, vs the computer or in Pass & Play, while the tab is hidden). It turns amber with 2:00 left and red for the last minute.

The missile: if the clock runs out, a missile appears at the start of the next turn, in the middle band, as close as possible to equally far from each side. Any unit claims it by stepping onto it (normal move cost) and carries it with them; capturing the carrier by moving onto it claims it for you instead, but a carrier killed by a shot just drops it there, unclaimed. The claimer can fire it (2 points, ends your turn) starting the following turn — never the turn it was claimed, so the other side always gets one full turn to react. A fired missile never misses: it destroys the enemy's entire force (walls survive) and wins the game immediately.

Win: capture the enemy King, or fire the missile.