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Black’s route from the start is “1234567FE8ef” and from the river “ABCD1234 etc”.
White’s route from the start is “1234567fe8EF” and from the river “abcd1234 etc”.

Both players begin the game with seven playing pieces each, one player taking the dark pieces, the other player taking the light colours. The board is empty at the beginning; all pieces begin play off the board at the start position.

The object of the game is to enter all the playing pieces onto the board and race them along the given route and to bear them off into the home position on the opponent’s side of the board.

Preliminaries:
Both players agree on a unit stake for the game or a larger total amount for a set.
Players take turns to play. Draw lots or throw the dice to decide who plays first.

Mechanics:
Pieces must always move forward along the route and a player may have as many pieces on board as they wish.
The player whose turn it is to play has the option to either
a) Throw the dice for entering a piece or
b) Move or exit a piece already on the board without throwing.

A: Entering pieces:
To enter a piece onto the board a player must throw the dice (throwing is forced if there are no pieces on the board for the player to move).
3 binary dice are used to give the values 1 - 4 (3 blanks = 4) the dice are only used to enter pieces. All dice are thrown at once, and the number of marked corners pointing up determines the points scored in that throw.
New pieces enter through the gate between the two rosettes. The number thrown indicates the numbered square to land on (square 1 being the gate).
Pieces re-entering from the river use the throws 1 – 4 to restart on squares “A or a”-“D or d” respectively.
Pieces entering the board (from “start” or “river”) may not land on an occupied square.

B: Moving pieces:
To move a piece on the board or to exit a piece from the board a player must not throw the dice but must move the chosen piece according to the movement rules:
A player’s piece, in play, is moved according to the number of pieces in the chain of connected pieces that it belongs to along that players route, regardless of the colours of the pieces in that chain.
E.g. an isolated piece can only move one square; any piece within a connected string of three pieces moves exactly three squares. This means that the movement power within a string may have a different value for both sides. If there are pieces on squares 1,2 and 3 and white has no piece on square “d” but black has pieces on squares “C” and “D”, then a white piece on “1” moves three squares, but a black piece on “2” moves five squares. Similar situations occur in the exit area.

Hitting:
Only one piece is allowed on a square at any one time. If a player lands on a square occupied by the opponent then the opponents piece is removed from the board and must re-enter the game from the river. There are no protected squares.

Getting home:
Using the onboard movement rules, if the move value of a players piece puts that piece beyond the opponents “f (F)” square, then that piece can exit to home.

The game ends when one side has managed to exit all pieces belonging to that player.

Settling scores:
The winner scores for each opponent piece in play: one point for each piece on the board and two points for each piece waiting to enter.
If playing a set of games then the first to total 21 points wins the total stake.
If staking units then the loser pays one unit for each point scored in the game.