Introduction
Crazy Sliders came about while Rusty Spell was trying to think of a different sort of game, where the strategy of chess is suddenly and randomly thrown into the world of pure luck at any given moment, as if the knight or rook suddenly go nuts. The game described above doesn't exist yet as Rusty would like it to (it will probably be called Insanity or Werewolf), but Sliders is step one in the evolution.
Setup
Crazy Sliders is played on a backgammon board with backgammon pieces, and the movement of the pieces is similar to backgammon, in that your pieces move from point to point from the opposite side of your board to the left and then back to the right and to your home board and off the board. It is also similar in that you roll for the amount of points you can move.
But this isn't backgammon, so to set up, you put five of your pieces on the bar and your opponent puts five of his pieces on the bar. You only use one die for rolling.
Game Play
The game is fairly simple. The first rule is that you must move all of your pieces off the bar before you can begin moving them around the board to your home. After all of your pieces are off the bar, you may choose which piece to move after you have rolled your die. You may move your piece anywhere the roll allows, even if your own or your opponents' pieces are on that point.
However! If you roll a six, this means that the craze has hit, and one of your pieces has gone crazy! But you don't know which one. In order to determine which piece is crazy, roll the die again. Point to your pieces ("any many miny mo" style) while counting the number on the die, going in order of piece movement and beginning with the piece closest to the beginning. Whichever piece your finger lands on is "touched" with the craze, and has gone crazy. This means that he "slides" to the opposite point on the board, and that any piece(s) (whether or not it is your piece(s) or your opponents') that were in that place are sent back to the bar (where, again, they must move out before any other piece on the board can move).
Winning the Game
The game ends when you've managed to move all of your pieces off the board. Note that you must leave the board by exact count. If ever you cannot move for this reason, your turn is passed.
Strategy and Philosophy
Since you can never predict when one of your men will go crazy, or which one, the strategy is to try the best you can to make it so you are across from your opponents pieces so that you can slide them onto the bar. This, of course, is difficult to do for all five pieces, so do your best. Other than this, just remember that the game is called Crazy Sliders, that once you think you're about to win you just go crazy and slide back to the beginning, and that the game perfectly mirrors the craziness of real life, so try to have fun. It should also be noted that serious game players probably won't enjoy this at all, but that kids might. The full title of this game should be "Crazy Sliders: A Children's Game."
Copyright (c) Feb 2002 by Noby and Rusty's Games