The rules of Hexarch

Read again ?? :(

The board

Three different colour class:

• 91 cells: a hexagon with 6 cells along each side
• Starts with 18 pieces each side: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 3 bishops, 9 pawns
• White moves first

A rook slides along all six edges of its hexagon. Two more directions than you're used to.

Tip: You can move the piece around. Try it!

Lose one bishop, and a third of the board goes quiet for you.

All three start stacked on the f-file, one per colour class.

Pawns move straight forward and capture to their two forward-diagonal neighbours. From the starting cell, a pawn may step two.

1 / 4

A king in check must get out of it immediately: move away, block the line, or capture the attacker.

Checkmate: 1–0
The king is attacked and nothing can save it. The attacker wins the full point.
Stalemate: ¾–¼
The side to move has no legal move but is not in check. The side that delivered it gets ¾, the other ¼.
Threefold repetition: draw
The same position with the same side to move appears three times.
50-move rule: draw
Fifty moves by each side pass with no capture and no pawn move.
Not enough pieces: draw
Nobody can force mate with king only.
Flag fall
In a timed game, the player whose clock reaches zero loses.
Resignation
A player may give up at any time.

Most of what you know still applies. These are the differences:

	Regular chess	Hexarch
Board	64 squares, 8 files	91 hexagons, 11 files of different lengths
Cell colours	Two	Three
Bishops	Two per side, 4 directions	Three per side, one on each colour, 6 directions
Rook and queen	Rook 4 directions, queen 8	Rook 6 directions, queen 12
Knight	Up to 8 targets	Up to 12 targets, and worth more than a bishop
Pawn capture	Diagonally forward	To the two cells forward-left and forward-right; en passant
Castling	Yes	No
Stalemate	Draw	¾ - ¼
Promotion	On the last rank	On the far edge cell of whatever file the pawn is on

Every cell has a name, and the move list uses them.

• Files run from a to l, skipping j. Cells are numbered from White’s side, starting at 1.
• The centre cell is f6. White's king starts on g1 and Black's on g10.
• A move is written as start cell, dash, end cell: e4–e6 is the e-pawn stepping two cells.