Knights of the Pond Table

Pondlife theme notwithstanding, Knights of the Pond Table should really be classified as a Fairy Chess variant. It's played on a board that essentially a 5 x 5 square grid with two extra rows on each side. It's in these rows that your pieces start off: five Spiders in the first rank and a Dragonfly in the middle of the second rank, with two Frogs on either side of it.

Spiders move one space in any direction, much like a King in Chess. Frogs move exactly two spaces in a straight line in any direction, and Dragonflies can move one, two or three spaces in a straight line in any direction. You can move over other pieces (your own or an opponent's) without affecting them but you ordinarily capture an opponent's piece when you land on the square it was occupied.

There's more, however. Tho' the Dragonflies have a points value of 3, the Frogs and Spiders all have different values on their reverse: 3, 1, 1, -1 (Frogs) and 2, 1, 1, 1, 0 (Spiders). This introduces a hint of Stratego-style bluff and gamble. It's points that matter when the game ends, so you'll want to be confident you have the most points if you're triggering the end-game condition of occupying three of the five centre squares on the board or capturing the last remaining Dragonfly. You can also end the game by eliminating all pieces of one colour or when you have captured pieces with a total value of 12 points. Advance a Spider to the last row opposite your home area and you get to reclaim a previously captured piece.

That's not all. Tho' the movement and capture of pieces is entirely strategic, designer Dixon Block has incorporated some luck into the mix with the addition of action cards that affect play. Players start off with a random card and you earn another card every time you capture an opponent's piece, tho' you can't use a card on the same turn on which you drew it. The cards are literally game changers:

• Frog's Tongue lets you capture a piece adjacent to one of your Frogs

• Spider Web can be placed on a Spider to prevent any adjacent piece from being moved

• Rudder Tail allows a Dragonfly to zigzag their movement

• Frog Legs adds one to the distance a piece can move

• Turtle Shell can be played in response to an opponent's move to prevent them from capturing one of your pieces

• Poisonous Snake can be played when a piece is captured and kills the attacking piece.

Strategy game purists may object but the cards add a further element of bluff and deduction to the game, to the extent that it can often be worth keeping cards in hand unplayed to use as deterrents against another player's attack.

Knights of the Pond Table can be played by 2-4 players. If you play with four players you can either have everyone out for themselves or play as a contest between two teams. Likewise, you have the option of playing the two-player game with two sets of pieces each. That said, our preference so far has been the two-player head-to-head and the four-player free-for-all.

Shown here on Board's Eye View is a preview prototype of Knights of the Pond Table produced by Simplexity ahead of the game's upcoming crowdfunding launch. The published game is expected to have wooden tokens in place of the cardboard ones shown here, and there may yet be other refinements. We'll endeavour to post details of the crowdfunding campaign when it launches.

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