Barca (board game)

Barca is a two-player strategy board game invented by Andrew Caldwell.

[1] It is played on a 10x10 checkerboard with three types of animal playing-pieces that move like the queen, bishop and rook in chess.

Two distinguishing features from a typical chess variant are the absence of capture, and the fundamental role of a rock-paper-scissors dominance relationship among the three types of pieces: elephant, lion and mouse.

The object of the game is to occupy three of the four "watering hole" squares that are located near the center of the board.

A player's animals are friendly to each other, meaning they are allowed to occupy squares adjacent to each other.

The rules of Barca are codified in the instruction manual of the retail version of the game, and also described in a video interview of Caldwell by LivingDice.com.

The rock-paper-scissors dominance-rules prevent animals moving to certain squares that would otherwise be accessible by the general movement rules described above.

Initial positions of pieces of Barca
Initial positions
Moves of the mouse.
Moves of the mouse
Moves of the lion.
Moves of the lion
Moves of the elephant.
Moves of the elephant
Moves of afraid elephant.
Moves available to "afraid" elephant. The red "not" symbols mark locations normally available except that the elephant would be afraid due to the adjacent opposing player's mouse.