THE PLAYING FIELD
Advanced Laser Chess is played on a 15 × 11 board. The Red and Green players start on opposite sides of the board, with the Red player making the first move.
GAME PLAY AND TURNS
Players take turns and may make up to three actions per turn. Each of the following counts as one action:
- Moving a piece one square up, down, left, or right. Diagonal travel is possible if the path is clear — it just costs two actions.
- Firing a Laser or Stunner. Each laser may only be fired once per turn.
- Rotating a rotatable piece. Rotations are in 45° steps. Rotating all the way back to an equivalent orientation refunds the action.
You can use your actions to capture an opposing piece by stomping over it (King, Octagons), to displace a piece by stepping into it with the Hypergon, to rotate the Laser or a mirror to set up an attack or defence, or to fire a beam and try to vaporize or stun an enemy piece. Each piece carries its own once-per-turn cap on capture, hyper, or fire actions — ALC has no shared "one special action per turn" limit.
The game ends when a player's King is destroyed.
SQUARE FEATURES
Some squares carry a permanent or toggling feature instead of a piece:
- Wall — impassable; absorbs beams.
- Hole — impassable for movement; pieces that are pushed into a Hole are removed from the game.
- Gate — toggles open/closed at random each turn. Closed gates block movement and beams; open gates let both pass.
- Displacement — toggles active/inactive each turn. An active displacement square will fling any piece that ends a move on it to a different square.
THE PIECES
KING
The most important piece. If your King is destroyed, you lose. The King has no reflective surfaces, so a beam from any direction is fatal. It can capture an opposing piece by moving onto its square, but only once per turn.
LASER
Your primary offensive piece. Rotate it to aim, then fire. The Laser has no reflective surfaces and cannot capture, so protect it well. In Laser Chess a Laser is immune to its own beam.
STUNNER
The Stunner is the next most important piece after the Laser. It fires a non-destructive beam that stuns any non-reflective surface it strikes. A stunned piece cannot act and is vulnerable on its mirrored sides until it thaws — each turn, a stunned piece has a fixed chance to thaw on its own. The Stunner is itself shielded on three sides (a 135° arc opposite the firing direction), so a counter-shot from behind reflects rather than stuns.
ONE-WAY MIRROR
A directional filter and a great companion for the Laser and Stunner. Beams travelling with the arrow pass through; beams travelling against it are reflected back. Beams perpendicular to the mirror destroy it.
BOMB
The Bomb deserves respect. A direct hit on its centre detonates it, destroying the bomb itself and every piece in the eight surrounding squares. A glancing hit at a side face vaporizes only the bomb. A Stun beam to its centre stuns everything in those same eight squares. The Bomb has two configurations — orthogonal and diagonal — that govern which face counts as "centre"; rotating between them costs an action, but rotating from one configuration back to its mirror equivalent refunds.
HYPERGON
The Hypergon (the ALC counterpart of the original Laser Chess Hypercube) is unique. It is immune to both the Laser and the Stunner — an incoming beam emerges from the Hypergon in a random direction. When you step onto another piece with the Hypergon, that piece is displaced to a different square in a random direction. A Hypergon may displace only once per turn.
BEAM SPLITTER
The only piece that can create beams. A beam striking the splitter at its vertex (the point joining the two mirrors) splits into two perpendicular beams. A beam returning along either of those split paths re-enters a side face and emerges back through the vertex. The exposed back face destroys the splitter when struck.
FULLY MIRRORED OCTAGON
An eight-sided fully mirrored stomper, indestructible by Laser fire. Originally called the "Mirrored Stomper" or "Mirrored Block", it is the most defensive piece in the game and a strong stomper too — only the King, another Octagon, the Bomb, or the Hypergon can take it. To many players it is as important as the Laser.
PARTIALLY MIRRORED OCTAGON
The Partially Mirrored Octagon (originally the "Stomper" or "Block") has a 135° reflective shield arc on three of its eight faces, with the remaining five exposed. Like the King and the Fully Mirrored Octagon it captures an opposing piece by moving onto it — once per turn.
TRIANGULAR MIRROR
One reflective face and one exposed back. At a cardinal orientation the reflective face acts as a flat mirror — a head-on hit returns 180°. At a diagonal orientation the same face acts as a 45° deflector — an incoming beam exits at right angles. A hit on the back face destroys it.
HYPER HOLE
A board feature, not a piece — it belongs to neither player. A laser beam that enters a Hyper Hole is absorbed. A piece that steps into one is displaced to a random location, in a random orientation, just as if it had stepped onto a Hypergon.
HOLE
Also a board feature, belonging to neither player. Holes are simply impassable — any piece that ends a move on one is removed from the game.
GAME STRATEGY
Spend the first few turns setting up a defensive position. Mirrors and Octagons are slow to redeploy, so an opening line of fire that doesn't include a re-aimed Laser tends to lose tempo to a player who builds protection first. ALC's wider beam-direction set means corners and walls are far more useful than they look at first glance.
