Slow6

Reading the board

The rules

• Each side secretly ranks its five pieces 1–5. You only ever see your own.
• On your turn, move one piece up to 2 squares in any direction. You can't jump over any piece, friend or foe.
• The first time a piece moves or fights, its rank is revealed for good. A piece that never moves stays hidden — safe, but useless. Deciding what to commit, and when, is the game.
• Attack by moving onto an enemy piece within reach. Both ranks are revealed. The winner stays; equal ranks destroy each other. Attacking a hidden piece is a gamble.
• Combat is a cycle — every rank beats exactly two others and loses to two (table below). A higher number is not simply stronger.
• Promotion: your rank N promotes by reaching the far row in the lane where the opponent placed their own rank N. The gold markers show what you know: on your back row, where each enemy rank promotes (that's your own setup); on the far row, your lanes — each appears once the matching enemy piece reveals itself.
• A promoted 6 beats anything except another 6 (two 6s destroy each other), but moves only 1 square.
• Attacking a 6 with anything else loses the attacker, but stuns the 6: it can't move or attack at all on its owner's next turn (a red ‖ badge shows it). A well-timed sacrifice buys you a whole move against an incoming 6.
• Catch a stunned 6: after you stun a 6, any of your pieces can capture it on your next turn (it's ringed in red while it's catchable).
• If you have no legal move, your turn passes automatically.
• Online, you have 24 hours for each move. Run out of time and you lose the game.

How to win

• Bring a promoted piece all the way back to the exact square it started on — an instant win.
• Or eliminate every opposing piece.
• After 15 moves each, the higher total of surviving ranks wins (a promoted piece counts as 6). A tie is a draw.

Who beats whom

Privacy

Finished games are sent to the Slow6 server without any personal data — just the lineups, moves and result — to help balance the game.