Tékumel Board Games: Míliyal of Mu'ugalavyá

(This is an adaptation of Shōbu, a two-player abstract strategy board game designed by Manolis Vranas and Jamie Sajdak.)

This game with simple rules but deep strategy is popular among priests throughout the Five Empires, but is generally popular in the west. It is commonly popular in Mu'ugalavyá but it originated in Livyánu. In Tsoliyánu it is called Míliyal, or Stones.

The board is made of of four sub-boards, each a 4x4 grid, called a palace. Each player has 16 stones of their color; to set up, they put 4 in each palace, along the row closest to them.

This is the board set up with red player at the bottom and the black player at the top. The two palaces closer to the player are called their home palaces. Customarily red moves first.

Players move two of their stones in their turn. The first move is called the court move. The player picks a stone of theirs on one of their home palaces and moves it 1 or 2 spaces in any single direction, orthogonal or diagonal. It may not bump or hop over any other stones, nor leave the palace.

Then the player does a corresponding hard move. The player picks another of their stones in an orthogonally adjacent palace. (So: their other home palace, or the opponent's closer home palace.) The stone must move the same direction and number of spaces. This move may push a single opponent's stone, but it is invalid and cannot be made if it would push two of the opponent's stones, push one of the player's own stones, or leave the palace.  Stones that are pushed out of the palace are removed from the game.

If a valid hard move cannot be found for a court move, then the court move is invalid too and must be redone.

A player wins when they remove all the opponent's stones from any palace, or if their opponent cannot make any valid court moves.