Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Banqi, or Half Chess, is a two-player Chinese board game played on a 4x8 grid (usually half of the Chinese Chess board). Banqi is a social game, usually played for fun rather than serious competition.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
Banqi, or Half Chess, is a two-player Chinese board game played on a 4x8 grid (usually half of the Chinese Chess board). Banqi is a social game, usually played for fun rather than serious competition. Because it has a significant element of chance, some people consider it a child's game, but Banqi often has remarkable depth of strategy. The 32 pieces are shuffled and randomly allocated face-down to squares on the board. The first player turns up a piece to begin the game. The color of the piece he turns up is the color he will play in the game. The second player then makes a move, and the two alternate until the game is finished. The game ends when a player cannot move; the player who cannot move loses. Most often, the game is lost because all of a player’s pieces have been captured and so he has no pieces to move. However, it is possible for one player to surround all of the other player’s pieces in a manner that makes it impossible for them to move.