HOW TO PLAY-

Pieces –
Any game pieces could be used but for our purposes we will use coins.
4 quarters will represent the Nephites
20 pennies will represent the Robbers

Set Up:
Put one quarter on each corner  and the pennies off the board.

Movement:

The gameboard consists of a grid of 25 points with lines of valid movement connecting them.  Moves are made along the lines drawn on the board. Notice that there isn’t any line between some of the points that could be diagonally connected, so there are some restrictions.

THE GAME BEGINS -

Players move alternatively, starting with the robbers. The actions made by robbers divide the game in two phases:

Phase One: 
Robbers - The robbers place one piece on one of the free junctions of the board. The robbers cannot be moved once they are place until the end of phase one.
Nephites - Alternately, the Nephites may move one piece one adjacent free space.  If a Nephite is adjacent to a robber at the beginning of a turn and (following a straight line) there is a free space on the other side of the robber, the Nephite may jump the robber and take it off the board (like checkers).  Only one robber at a time may be jumped.

Phase Two:  After all the robbers have been placed on the board they may be moved from their position to any available adjacent junction following any straight line. Robbers will try to fence the Nephites in so they have no available spaces to move.  Nephites will continue to move one space per turn and maneuver  to try to jump any robbers they can.

WINNING AND LOSING –

If the robbers succeed in blocking all four Nephite pieces so there are no moves available to them when it is there turn, the robbers win and the Nephites loose.

If the Nephites jump and destroy 5 robbers the game is over and the Nephites win and the robbers, of course, loose.

Good Luck!

NOTE: To spice things up a little, draw an arrow on the Nephite pieces(quarters) and make sure that on each turn the arrow is pointing the way the Nephite just moved. Now the Nephite is not allowed to jump or move directly backwards toward where he just came from.

Starting set up for the game

Robbers go first and may place a piece on any free space on the board.

Now the Nephites move one space.

The robber cannot move his pieces until all have been placed so to avoid getting jumped he has placed his next piece within the jumping path of the Nephite piece, successfully blocking that jump.

Unfortunately for the robbers, his newly placed piece was in the jumping path of another Nephite. Now, unable to move his remaining robber, no matter where he places a piece, he will loose a robber on the Nephites next turn. This clearly is a dumb place to start for the robbers.

Even though the robbers lost 3 pieces over the course of this game, they successfully blocked all 4 Nephites in for the win.