Play Tamarack Lake Chinese Checkers

How to play Tamarack Lake Chinese Checkers

The classic star board game on a camp blanket by a lake. Step or hop your ten marbles across the star into the point opposite, against one, two, three or five campers at three levels.

1. Press Play and pick how many players. The star board has 121 holes. Your ten red star marbles fill the point at the bottom of the screen, and your home is the point straight across, at the top. Each camper races the same way, from their point to the one opposite.
2. On your turn, tap one of your ringed marbles. Its steps show as dots: tap one to move to that empty hole next door, in any of the six directions.
3. Or hop. A gold ring marks a hop: over one marble right next to yours (anyone’s, your own too) into the empty hole straight beyond it. After a hop the same marble may hop again, in any direction, as many times as you like. Tap the next gold ring to keep going, or tap your marble or End turn to stop. A step and hops never mix in one move.
4. Nothing is captured: marbles that are hopped over stay where they are. Marbles may pass through any point on the board and stop anywhere.
5. The first player to fill their home with all ten of their own marbles wins. A player with no legal move passes, and if nobody can move the game is a draw.

Controls

• Touch or mouse: tap one of your ringed marbles, then a lit hole. A dot steps, a gold ring hops, and a dashed ring makes a whole chain of hops at once. In a chain, tap each next gold ring, then tap your marble or End turn to stop. Tap an earlier landing to go back to it. Undo, Hint, End turn and Menu sit on the shelf below the board, or beside it on a wide screen.
• Keyboard: the arrow keys move a visible focus between the holes, and Enter or Space picks up the marble in focus and moves it to the hole in focus. E ends a hop chain, U undoes, H shows a hint, and Escape puts a marble down or takes back an unfinished chain.
• Restart in the toolbar starts a new game. Menu starts a new game, changes the campers’ level, the number of players, who moves first, the home rule, the hops and the move speed in Settings, and shows your statistics and the rules. The toolbar also has pause, help, optional sound and fullscreen.