In this two-player abstract game designed by Adrián Jiménez Pascual, you're trying to be the first to get four of your five wooden pieces the six spaces from one side of the board to the other and back. This sounds routine but Squadro has some unique features...
For starters, you set the game up so that the two players are sitting perpendicular to each other rather than the more usual face to face. The starting position for each of your pieces is marked with the movement value for that row, in range 1-3. On your turn, you move your piece the distance indicated on that row end.
You would naturally think that this must be a game about moving your pieces so that they block those of your opponent. You'd be wrong. Quite the reverse. If your piece's movement takes you to or past the position of one of your opponent's pieces, it leaps over them and ends its movement for the turn, but it forces the piece it leapt to return to its starting point. Rather than blocking opponents, counterintuitively this game is all about avoiding positioning your pieces so that your opponent can leap them and send them to the start.
This makes for an interesting filler-length abstract strategy game. And Gigamic have done their usual sterling job with the production of Squadro, with its solid wooden pieces and board. Squadro is distributed in the UK by Hachette Board Games.
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