Description

Burrow is a whole series of draw-free annihilation games based on the general concept of capture-templates. To begin a turn, a player takes one of his pieces and captures-via-replacement some enemy piece. Some aspect of the capture provides a template whereby the piece may perform further captures. The template can be the minimal bounding box containing the move, the directions used to achieve the capture, or even the number of friendly pieces in the line-of-sight. Burrow is meant to be a game system and the only presiding rules, aside from the objective of annihilation, are that the template informs all further captures, that the capturing piece must keep moving until it has no available capture according to its template and the mechanism of movement must allow unlimited translation in both dimensions of the board in making the initial capture. Also the game is played on an 8x8 board with a regular alternating pattern of pieces. I invite anyone to put on their designing caps and suggest their own Burrow games. Here are some of my own.

Note: as a general rule in these 4 Burrow games there is no jumping over pieces of any color. However in others jumping may be allowed.

Box Burrow: this is closest to the original. In Box Burrow the template is the minimal bounding box containing the capture with the capturing piece's initial position, and the initial piece to be captured being at opposite corners. Further conventions are that the capture is achieved by a number of orthogonal steps and the horizontal and vertical values of the bounding box cannot be interchanged. Further captures can be made, as long as for each, movement is entirely within a bounding box of equivalent dimension and as with the first capture the next piece to be captured is at its opposite corner.

Path Burrow: In Path Burrow the template is the exact orthogonal path the piece takes to make the first capture. Further conventions are that the path must only involve movement in no more than two directions, one horizontal and one vertical and that the path can be rotated or flipped in any orientation but its ends (initial and terminating) cannot be interchanged.

Sweep Burrow: By far the easiest of the variants so far, Sweep Burrow's template is simply the two orthogonal directions involved in making the initial capture. The only further convention here is that if the capture was made with just movement in one direction, you cannot employ a second direction.

Tumburrow: Tumburrow has the most distinctive template of these. The template is to count the number of friendly pieces (aside from the capturing piece itself) a queen's move away from the first capture. The other convention is that every capture must only involve movement in no more than two directions (orthogonal and diagonal) however these directions do not provide template data.

—description from the designer