I was playing a variant of Chinese Checkers with a draughts board and pieces. (The board in the dream may not have been precisely square, but we'll gloss over that.) Black and white play from adjacent sides of the board, with all the pieces initially off the board. In one move, you can:
- move forward one space (or put a piece in the first row of any column);
- move forward two spaces (or put a piece in the second row of any column), or
- hop forward over a piece of either colour. There must of course be a vacant space on the far side of the jumped piece in which to land, but as in draughts one move can include several successive hops with the same piece.
This seems superficially interesting, but it probably doesn't work well in practice because the pieces only move in one direction and one would tend to use the same column for all one's pieces in order to get maximum hop potential. There wouldn't be much interaction between the players except where the two paths cross.
But there was another addition: it seemed that before or after your move (at your option) you could answer a quiz question for an extra move. If you answered correctly you could move any one piece one square forward.
In addition, in the dream there were actually four players, playing partners. The partners weren't necessarily aware of each other's strategy, which made things slightly more complicated. (e: Just to be clear, the people sitting on opposite sides of the board move the same pieces in the same direction and with the same objective. But conferring isn't allowed.)
Anyway, I was playing white and was busy lining up pieces so I could do a mega-hop to the other side (a strategy which, it seems, hadn't occurred to the opposition) when we were interrupted for some purpose or other. When it was time to return to the game I discovered it had been tidied up, possibly by my parents. I was quite upset at that.
