Checkers

Checkers (チェッカー, Chekkā) is a minigame in Suikoden V. It can be played with Egbert Aethelbald after recruiting him in the Baska Mine tunnels north of the Dwarf Camp.

Egbert's checkers board has been passed down through the Aethelbald family for generations, and is designed to hone the player's strategic thinking as a military general.

Overview

Checkers is played on a 6x6 grid with three different rule sets to play with. Players take turns moving pieces on the board, one move at a time. Each rule set has different movement patterns and numbers of pieces to contend with. There are three difficulty levels for each rule set.

Checkers

Each player moves a piece, and if they jump over an opponent's piece, they take it. The player who finally eliminates all of their opponent's pieces wins. Each player has six pieces. They must move a piece on their turn. When there's only one piece left, the game is automatically decided because it's no longer possible to force a tie. The goal is to prevent the opponent from taking any pieces and to position themselves so that they can take their opponent's pieces.

Entrapment

Under these rules, pieces move in a straight line. There's no set number of squares they can move across in one move, either horizontally or vertically. However, they can only move in a straight line once; they can't move backwards or turn in one move. By utilizing this movement, the player can capture an opponent's piece by sandwiching it between two of their own pieces. Even if there are two or more enemy pieces sandwiched between them, the player can still capture them all. As in the standard checkers rule set, returning a piece to its previous square is prohibited.

Conqueror

The first player to send all of their pieces into the opponent's territory (their top two rows) wins. Pieces move one square at a time in eight directions. Players can also jump over one adjacent piece, but not two. This can be either an enemy piece or their own piece. Players take turns moving one piece at a time, until their piece is placed in the opponent's territory. If, for any reason, their piece cannot be moved, they pass and it becomes their opponent's turn.

Piece Collecting

Checkers pieces are figurines, modeled after the 108 Stars. Winning a game wins the player the piece Egbert used in the game. While pieces can be obtained in any rule set, there are three types of rare pieces that can only be obtained in each rule set. These rare pieces only appear on Advanced difficulty. When Egbert runs out of new pieces, he will default to his Egbert piece.

Collecting the rare pieces also gives the player other unique rewards.

Rare Pieces
Piece	Game	Reward
Ferid Piece	Checkers	Knight Statue
Arshtat Piece	Entrapment	Queen Statue
Lymsleia Piece	Conqueror	Goddess Statue
Complete set	All	Karmic Effect Epic