Helium Party Balloons

In response to the groundswell of interest, admiration and inquiries about Mark Changizi’s daughter’s reinvention of chess, here are the full set of rules of Plastic Animal Chess:

The game proceeds like a normal game of chess.
The board is nine squares wide rather than eight.
Rather than white and black pieces players choose plastic toys to represent each character
A note should be made about which piece each plastic toy represents.
Rather than remove the pieces that are taken, they remain on the board.
A jail area is required next to the board as a temporary holding area for jailed pieces.
Each player has 18 pieces.
The following pieces start on the back row:
- 1 Guard: Stays at the beginning and blocks attacks on the king.
- 2 Master: Jumps as far as he wants diagonally.
- 3 King: Needs to be protected and moves one space diagonally and forwards (not backwards).
- 4 Doctor: Moves up to five squares forwards and revives one piece it is next to.
- 5 Jailer: Moves one in any direction, pieces he takes are put in jail. If he is taken the jailed pieces are released to their starting positions.
- 6-9 Knight: Moves forwards or sideways. Can take pieces exactly two squares away. Each player has four knights.
The following pieces start on the front row:
- 10 Flyer: Moves two, five, or seven squares in any direction.
- 11 Replacer: Moves one in any direction, pieces he takes are swapped with a jailed piece.
- 12-13 Sneaker: Moves any number of squares along the outer edge of the board only.
- 14-18 Child: Can’t take other pieces as they don’t fight, but tries to protect pieces by blocking movement.

Check out Game People’s board game review of Plastic Animal Chess for more details and background about how it all happened. Tweet suggestions and additions to the rules to @GeekDadGamer.

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