Martian chess

Martian Chess is an abstract strategy game for two or four players invented by Andrew Looney in 1999.

[1] The set was Looney Labs's first Icehouse release and first to showcase its potential as a game system.

[2] In 2001, Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set won the Origins Award for Best Abstract Board Game of 2000.

[10] Each player starts with nine pieces: three small (pawns), three medium (drones), and three large (queens).

The red lines in the diagrams indicate notional canals which divide the board into territories, or quadrant.

Players then compute their scores by adding up the point values of the pieces they captured: queen = 3, drone = 2, pawn = 1.

Aside from strategic differences, play is unaffected; it is legal (and sometimes good strategy) to capture your teammate's pieces.

Four-player and two-player starting setups