You don’t need to sign in to play, but sign-in allows you to play your games across devices. Your email is used only for sign-in purposes.
Also, to help improve the game and its computer player, this site saves your games, ratings and feedback under a random ID. (No ads, no tracking.)
Game log
New game
Play
Players
Colors
Pace
Turn rules
Guards
First move
Computer
In four-player games the computer plays at Easy for now.
Seats
Choose who plays each color. You are Red.
Online games
Settings
Visibility
Board
Appearance
Sound
Send feedback
Anything at all: a rule that confused you, a bug, a move the computer made, an idea. It goes straight to the designer, with the game you're in if there is one.
Quick Rules
New to Quadranj, or want a refresher? (your game waits for you).
Goal
Get your royal, or your secret burglar, onto your home square.
Or box in an enemy royal. At the end of every turn, after captures, any royal that can’t move is immobilized, the opponents’ royals checked first: box in an enemy royal and you win, even if yours is boxed in too; box in only your own and you lose. Royals can’t be captured. (Four players: an immobilized player is out, and all their pieces leave the board.)
Your turn
No phases and no passing. Each turn you make exactly two moves.
A move is one piece or stack doing one thing: a step or a slide, a royal’s swap or charge, a pilot climbing in or out, stacking that ends in one stack (from any side, in any order), or a chain of unstacking.
Each piece or stack moves in only one move per turn. Pieces that have moved turn pale; tap one to see why.
If you can’t make your second move, you lose (four players: you’re out).
Four players go clockwise: Green, Blue, Yellow, Red (high-visibility colors: Black, Blue, White, Red).
Pieces and how they move
Each player has a royal (value 4), three guards (2 each), and blockers (1 each), each carrying a pilot (½). Two players: eight blockers each, some starting stacked two high. Four players: six blockers each, no stacks.
Royals and guards slide any distance along a row or column, like rooks.
Blockers and stacks step one square in any direction, like kings.
A lone pilot steps one square up, down, left, or right, never diagonally, but it may climb into or out of a blocker in any direction.
Stacks
Stacking that ends in one stack is one move.
Unstacking can cascade within one move: blockers peeled off a stack can split again.
A stack that has moved can’t move, stack or unstack again that turn, but a fresh blocker may still stack onto it as a separate move.
Express lane: stacking can run along a line of equal-height stacks in one go, and any number of blockers can use it. Select the blockers, then double-tap the landing stack (a single tap just selects that stack).
Pilots and empty blockers
An unstacked blocker’s pilot can climb out: as part of the unstacking move if its blocker has just unstacked, otherwise as a move of its own.
An empty blocker is a wall: it can’t be moved, charged, swapped, or captured, and nothing can stack onto it.
Any player’s pilot can climb in and take it over, and that blocker can then move or stack, all in the same move.
A pilot that has just climbed in may hop sideways into another adjacent empty blocker, and on across any number of them, but never back into one it has left; the hops end once its blocker moves or stacks.
Royal specials
Swap with an adjacent friendly piece, diagonals included (not a stack), but only one that hasn’t moved this turn.
Charge an enemy piece (not a stack) along a row or column from at least one square away: your royal takes its square and the enemy piece takes the one beside it.
A swap or a charge is one move.
Captures
A piece or stack is captured when enemy pieces sit on two opposite sides of it (not diagonal) and the enemy pieces around it (diagonals count) total at least double its value. A stack counts its height. All capturing pieces must be one color.
Captures happen at the end of the capturing player’s turn, and the bracketing pieces needn’t move: a piece that moves into jeopardy is captured at the end of that player’s next turn, even if nothing moves near it. Pending captures pulse red.
A lone pilot is captured simply by moving onto it.
Keeps and the burglar
A Keep is a home square plus its three neighbors. Blockers and ordinary pilots can’t enter active Keeps, and no guard may enter an enemy Keep. Guards and royals may enter their own Keep (the one they’re trying to reach). A guard or blocker charged into an enemy Keep is removed.
Each player secretly picks one pilot as a burglar (gold mask, visible only to its owner). It may enter its own goal Keep, which ordinary pilots and blockers can’t; entering it reveals the burglar.
Captures decide, or a draw
If the same position comes up a third time with nothing new in between, or 25 rounds pass with no capture and no one knocked out, the player who has captured more wins (a guard counts 2, a piloted stack its height, a lone pilot ½). With equal captures it’s a draw (a stalemate).
But don’t just shuffle: if your own arrangement of pieces comes up a third time with no new arrangement of yours in between, you lose (four players: you’re out), unless every other player is repeating too; then captures decide.
In a four-player game, a draw is shared by everyone still playing.
The board
Two players use the inner 8×8; the outer ring is unused. Four players use the full 10×10, and each home is the outer corner square of its color.
Each player starts in one corner and races diagonally to the home square of their own color. Each royal starts on its starting corner (another player’s home), with its guards two squares out along the edges and the diagonal (Red: royal a1, guards a3, c3 and c1); no guard starts on an enemy home.
The board is shown from your side, so your home is top right. (In pass-and-play set to Turn pieces or Fixed, the board doesn’t turn.)