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Arimaa

Arimaa is a modern abstract with unusual mechanics.  It's technically a racing game, where the goal is for a rabbit to reach the other side of the board; but pushing and pulling are more imporant than running.  All pieces move the same, but stronger pieces can push or pull weaker ones, and weaker pieces become frozen when adjacent to stronger opposing pieces unless assisted by friendly pieces.  Instead of capturing by direct attack, pieces can be captured by pushing or pulling them into one of the trap squares on the board.   Read the complete rules here.

Robots:  Arimaa was developed as a challenge to programmers, so unsurprisingly the robot isn't terribly strong.  Stronger bots are available at Arimaa.com




arimaa board
Arimaa appears at boardspace under the terms of the Arimaa public license.

Links
Arimaa rankings at Boardspace
Arimaa at BoardGameGeek
Arimaa win/loss database Arimaa.com
Arimaa game archives

The back story: 
Arimaa was invented at about the same time Boardspace was started, and I've been aware of Arimaa from the beginning.  Originally, Arimaa seemed to be mainly a robot programming challenge, and therefore not a high priority for Boardspace.   The interesting thing, following the ongoing ebb and flow of programs verses humans on Arimaa.com, was that there was real interest in the game from human players, not just among programmers. 



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