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Nightmare Pachisi is a multitrack linear wargame for two, three or four players, designed to be played with stackable Icehouse pieces, although it could be played with other pieces. Despite the name, it is not a race game (which sort of matches Martian Chess, which despite the name, is not what most people think of as Chess). It contains the unusual feature that pieces belonging to two different players may, under certain circumstances fuse into a Nightmare piece usable by either player.
The following rules are for four players, two- and three-player rules are found later.
Nightmare Pachisi requires a seven by seven square board, two four-sized dice and four differently colored sets of nine Icehouse Pyramids: three small, three medium and three large each. The four differently colored sets are required even if less than four players are playing. The colors will be referred to in this set of rules as Blue, Green, Red and Yellow, but they can be any four different colors.
A purpose-made Nightmare Pachisi board should have seven squares on each side, with each square being an inch and a quarter on a side or larger, and has eight specially-marked entry squares, two of each color of piece.
The goal of Nightmare Pachisi is to capture more points worth of pyramids than any other player. Pyramids are valued thusly:
Pyramid Size Value Large 3 points Medium 2 points Small 1 point
Movement is determined by the roll of the two four-sided dice. Each die roll can be used to move a different piece, or both rolls can be used to move the same piece twice. A piece may be moved back to the space on which it started. All of a die roll must be used, IE, if you roll a 3, you must move a piece three squares. If at all possible you must use both die rolls. If you have no possible moves, you pass that turn.
No more than two pieces may ever occupy a square, and two pieces of different colors may never share a square, except during a capture, or when part of a Nightmare, but pieces may pass over other pieces regardless of who owns them. When there are two pieces in a square, the smaller should be stacked upon the larger to make it obvious what pieces are present.
The board can be looked at as three nested tracks or circles, with an extra center space:
A roll of a 1 can also be used to enter a piece from off of the board. A piece must be entered on one of a player's two entry squares. If an entry square is already occupied by two friendly pieces, another piece may not be entered there. If an entry square is occupied by another player's piece or pieces, a piece can be entered there only if it is capable of making a capture there (see next section). Pieces must be entered in order of size; all of a player's small pyramids must be entered before any of that player's medium pyramids may be entered and all of that player's medium pyramids must be entered before that player can enter any large pyramids.
You capture pieces by landing on them with pieces of equal or greater strength. The strength of a piece is the same as its scoring value: one for small pyramids, two for medium pyramids, and three for large pyramids. A stack of pyramids has strength equal to its total value, so a stack of a small and a large pyramid has a strength of four. If you have two pieces so arranged so that by using both of your die rolls you may move both of them to the same square in the same move, you may add their attack strenth together. So, given the example stack (a small and a large), if you had a medium pyramid three spaces away, and another four spaces away from the stack, and you rolled 3,4, you could move both of the medium pyramids to that square, and capture the stack, since both the stack and the moved pieces have strengths of four.
Only pieces belonging to owner of an entry square, or Nightmares containing a component belonging to the owner of the entry square, may capture on an entry square. If one of a player's entry squares is occupied by an opponent's pieces, they may be attacked either by entering a piece or pieces, moving pieces already on the board there, or by a combination of the two.
A player forms a Nightmare stack (usually just referred to as a Nightmare) by moving a single pyramid to an square containing a single larger piece belonging to an opponent. You can thus form a Nightmare by moving a small pyramid onto an opponent's medium or large pyramid, or moving a medium pyramid onto an opponent's large pyramid. You may not form a Nightmare by entering a smaller pyramid on top of an opponent's larger pyramid occupying one of your entry squares.
Once a Nightmare has been formed, it "fuses" into a single piece, and remains a single piece until it is captured, rescued or hijacked. A Nightmare belongs to both players owning the pieces composing it, and it may be moved by either of them as one of their pieces on their turn. A Nightmare moves like a single piece, with the combined strength of both of its components, except you may not use a Nightmare and another piece to make a combined attack on a single square. A Nightmare stack composed of a large Red pyramid and a small Blue pyramid could be moved either by the Red or the Blue player on their turns, and would have a strength of 4. You may form a Nightmare and move it in the same turn. Pieces captured by a Nightmare go to the score pile of the player moving it.
Nightmares may be captured like normal stacks by players who do not have a component in the Nightmare. Players which own one of the Nightmare's components may not capture the Nightmare, but they may rescue it. A rescue occures when a player who owns one of the components of a Nightmare moves another, single pyramid to the square the Nightmare occupies. The combined strength of the player's component in the Nightmare and their pyramid moved must equal or exceed the strength of the other player's component. The rescue captures the other player's component, converting the Nightmare into a normal stack. A Nightmare occupying an entry square may not be rescued by a piece being entered, and a rescue count as a capture. Thus, a player with a Nightmare containing one of their pyramids on one of their entry squares may not enter pieces on that entry square, unless they first move the Nightmare off of the entry square.
As well as capturing a Nightmare, a player who does not own one of the Nightmare's component's may hijack it. A Nightmare is highjacked by moving a pyramid smaller than the larger pyramid making up the Nightmare to the square the Nightmare occupies. Then, the smaller component of the Nightmare is captured, and a new Nightmare piece composed of the hijacking piece and the larger component is formed.
The game is over the instant the last piece of any color is captured, including in the count any pieces off of the board waiting to be entered and any pieces that are part of a Nightmare. If that last piece is captured by the move of the currently moving player using their first die roll of the turn, the capturing player does not get to use their second die roll. All play stops at that instant, and the players score their pieces, with small pyramids captured being worth one point, medium periods captured being worth two points, and large pyramids captured being worth three points. The player with the highest number of points wins.
Team play is another form of the game for four players, where instead of every man for himself, the game is between two teams of two players. One team takes the Red and Blue pieces, and the other takes the Green and Yellow pieces.
Play proceeds as in the usual four-player game, with each player rolling for, and moving pieces of a color. However, all pieces taken by a team are kept as a single pool, and members of a team may not capture each other's pieces, or form Nightmares with each other. The rule against having pieces of more than one color on a square other than for captures and Nightmares is not relaxed, so allied pieces may not share squares. This means that if an allied piece is occuping one of the other team member's entry squares, pieces may not be entered on that square, and that Nightmares may not be captured or hijacked, only rescued. The game still ends when all pieces of a color -- not a team -- have been captured. Then the team with the highest point total of captured pieces wins.
The two-player version of Nightmare Pachisi is identical to the team game, except that one player plays both the Red and the Blue pieces, and the other player players both the Green and the Yellow pieces. The players take seperate turns for their colors, with play moving around the board clockwise in the order of the outer rings entry squares. The player winning the die roll for going first chooses which of their colors will move first.
The three-player game is somewhat more complicated. Each player chooses a color, and the remaining color becomes the "dummy". The dummy is a seperate player, and can capture the other player's pyramids. The dummy can even win!
Players take turns moving for the dummy, in clockwise order. So, if the Blue player moved first, and the Green pieces were the dummy, the sequence of play would be:
The player moving for the dummy can not just move the dummy's pieces freely, they must follow two priorities, in order:
Player Color Player 1 Blue Player 1 (Dummy) Green Player 2 Red Player 3 Yellow Player 1 Blue Player 2 (Dummy) Green Player 2 Red Player 3 Yellow Player 1 Blue Player 3 (Dummy) Green Player 2 Red Player 3 Yellow
One way to look at the above priorities is to score a move 10 priority points per point of pyramid captured, and 1 priority point per pyramid entered onto the board. A move that captured two medium pyramids would score 40 points, and so have a higher priority score than a move that captured a large pyramid and entered a piece, which would only score 31. The player moving for the dummy must make the move that has the highest possible priority score. However, they may choose among possible moves with the same priority score.
After a player moves for the dummy, they should ask the other players "Anyone see a higher priority move?" If no one does, then the dummy's move is over. If one of other players points out a move with a higher priority score, then the player moving for the dummy must make a move of at least that priority. Once both of the other players has agreed to the dummy moving player's move for the dummy, the move will then stand, even if a move with a higher priority score is discovered later. It is cheating for the player moving the dummy to deliberately make a move of lower priority than one they have noticed (although impossible to prove).
Optional Rule: The player who moves next after the dummy has a small advantage in that they can move the dummy's pieces towards their pieces, then capture them. Now, this is not reliable, since moves are controlled by die rolls. However, if this bothers you, you can play that a player may not capture pieces belonging to the dummy if they were the last player to move the dummy.
Nightmare Pachisi (or, as my kids prefer, Rob and Roll) is intended to be a fairly fast, light strategy game with an element of luck -- a Beer and Pretzels sort of game. I wanted a game with dice, since my kids often don't like to play pure abstract stategy games with me. And I wanted a game that wouldn't last too long. A linear wargame had the advantage that it had to come to an end once all of the pieces were captured.
Linear Wargames (Bell [1] calls them running fight games) occupy a position between race games such as Pachisi or Backgammon and the more usual capturing board games, such as Checkers or Chess. In fact both Bell and Parlett [2] consider the possiblity that they might be an intermediate step between the two forms, and that that planar wargames may have developed from them. They have been found in the Middle East (Tab), India (Tablan), and Meso-America (Pulac).
The board used for Nightmare Pachisi isn't typical of those for running fight games, although similar boards have been used for race games in India and the Middle East. However, such boards are usually traveled as spirals, not as three interconnected tracks. I am not aware of any other linear wargame with multiple tracks, although there are so many games in the world, who can be sure?
The idea for Nightmare stacks came from V.R. Parton's incomplete game Knightmare Chess, which contains pieces that either player can move, although differently, so that one piece would be a Rook for black and a Knight for white.
I'd like to express my thanks for my kids, Alex and Jenny, for help playtesting, and for the suggestions that led to the dummy rules for the three-player version.
This picture shows the Nightmare Pachisi board I made. The board was made from a piece of 14" by 11" Ghostline Foamboard, using pencil, ruler and a set of colored permanent markers. The squares are 1.5" inches on a side. The whole project took about 15 minutes.
Bell, R.C., Board and Table Games From Many Civilizations, Dover, 1979.Parlett, David, The Oxford History of Board Games, Oxford University Press, 1999.