Below is a fun game called Sheep and Wolf (or maybe Fox and Hounds?, or other similar-sounding two-animal names). My mother-in-law introduced me to the game about a year ago. She used to play it with her dad :).

The rules are simple:

  • All pieces move diagonally, one square at a time, meaning the game is played on the dark squares.
  • The sheep (white pawns) can only move “forward”, which for white is towards the 8th rank.
  • The wolf (black king) can move in all four (diagonal) directions.
  • There is no capturing in this game (like chess) or jumping (like checkers) - only cornering.
  • The sheep win by cornering the wolf such that the wolf has no more legal moves.
  • The wolf wins if it reaches the 1st rank. Alternatively (and much less likely) the wolf wins if the sheep have run out of moves. In practice, this means the wolf has snuck past the sheep and is on its way toward the 1st rank, but hasn’t had time to reach it before the sheep run out of moves.

Give it a go! Oh, and there’s an AI to play against.