Jungle (board game)

Jungle or Dou Shou Qi is a traditional Chinese board game. It is also known as Jungle Chess or Animal Chess. It is a two player, abstract strategy game played on a 7x9 board. In many ways, the game resembles the western game Stratego, which has its origin in Jungle. The major difference between the two games is that in Jungle the pieces are not hidden from the opponent and initial setup is fixed.

Rules

Objective

The goal of the game is either to move a piece onto a special square, the den, on the opponent's side of the board, or capture all of the opponent's pieces.

Board

The Jungle game board consists of seven columns and nine rows of squares. Pieces move on the square spaces as in international chess, not on the lines as in xiangqi. Pictures of eight animals and their names appear on each side of the board to indicate initial placement of the game pieces. Other than initial setup, these animal spaces have no use in game play.

There are several special squares and areas of the Jungle board:
The Den is located in the center of the first row or of the board, and is labeled as such in . Traps are located to each side and in front of the Den, and are also labeled in Chinese. Two water areas or Rivers are located in the center of the Jungle board. Each comprises six squares in a 2x3 rectangle, and labeled with the Chinese characters for "river". There are single columns or of ordinary land squares on the edges of the board, and down the middle between the rivers.

Pieces

Each side has 8 pieces representing different animals, each with a different rank. Higher ranking pieces can capture all pieces of identical or weaker ranking. However, there is one exception: The elephant may not capture the mouse while the mouse may capture the elephant. The animal ranking, from strongest to weakest, is:

: 8 - Elephant
: 7 - Lion
: 6 - Tiger
: 5 - Leopard
: 4 - Dog
: 3 - Wolf
: 2 - Cat
: 1 - Mouse

Pieces are placed onto the corresponding pictures of the animals which are invariably shown on the Jungle board.

Movement

Players alternate moves with White moving first. During their turn, a player must move. Each piece moves one square horizontally or vertically . A piece may not move to its own den.

There are special rules related to the water squares:
* The Mouse is the only animal that is allowed to go onto a water square.
* The Mouse may not capture the Elephant or another Mouse on land directly from a water square.
* The Mouse may attack the opponent Mouse in the water if both pieces are in the water.
* A Mouse on land may not attack a mouse in the water.
* The Lion and Tiger pieces may jump over a river by moving horizontally or vertically. They move from a square on one edge of the river to the next non-water square on the other side. Such a move is not allowed if there is a Mouse on any of the intervening water squares. The Lion and Tiger are allowed to capture enemy pieces by such jumping moves.

Capturing

Animals capture the opponent pieces by "eating" them. A piece can capture any enemy piece which has the same or lower rank, with the following exceptions:

* The Mouse may kill the Elephant. Many published versions of the game say this is done by the Mouse crawling in the Elephant's ear and gnawing at his brains. As stated above, the Mouse may not capture the Elephant from a water square. The powers of the Mouse resemble those of the Spy in Stratego.
* The player may capture any enemy piece in one of the player's trap squares regardless of rank.

Variations

There are some commonly played variations to the rules official published by the board/pieces maker as follows:

* The Elephant may not kill the Mouse under any circumstances. This is because a mouse is able to dodge the attack of an elephant because of its size.

* The Leopard may jump over the river horizontally but not vertically . It cannot jump over a mouse in the river though.

* All traps are universal. If an animal goes into a trap in its own region, an opponent animal is able to capture it regardless of rank difference if it is beside the trapped animal. The rules for being on one's own trap do vary.

* Some play the Wolf to be stronger than the Dog.

* The rules for the Mouse to capture either the Elephant or Mouse from or into the water do vary.

* There is a simplified version called Animal Checkers, which has no traps or rivers, and only the Mouse, Dog, Tiger and Elephant.

* Amongst the many examples shown on gameboardgeek there is at least one where the pieces are designed so that they are no longer visible by the opponent . This apparently minor change alters the game from one of stochastic 'full-knowledge' to one of partial-knowledge.