What is Gungi?
Gungi is a fictitious strategy board game from the manga/anime HunterXHunter. The writer never specified rules for Gungi, but Japanese fans have created rules to make the game actually playable. I've acquired the rules as translated by an English speaking fan. For the purposes of stickpage playing Gungi, I have changed very few rules, but I have renamed a few pieces and rules for more consistency, ease of understanding and to clarify the previously vague rules or to ease unnecessary ruling.


The Basics
Gungi is played by two players, like traditional chess. One player controls black pieces and one player controls white pieces.
The goal of the game is to move, drop and position your pieces to capture the opposing colors commander. Should either commander be at risk of being captured, this is called check. Should a commander be incapable of escaping being in check, this is called checkmate and means the end of the game. Just like the king in chess.
Players will take turns dropping or moving pieces.
Black goes first.

Initial placement
Each player starts the game with 23 front pieces in their hand and no back pieces. Starting with black, players will take turns placing pieces in their territory "The first three rows on their sides of the board" until both players have placed all of their starting pieces.

During the initial placement, both players must have a soldier placed in each column. Since you start the game with nine soldiers that means there will only be one soldier of yours in each column.

Towers
There is a third dimension above the board called tiers, tiers range from one to three. Allowing pieces to be stacked atop one another in these tiers, stacked pieces are called towers and stacking pieces is called towering.

-Towers cannot contain two allied pieces of the same name.
-Only pieces on the top-most tier of a tower are able to move. Any piece(s) below are rendered immobile until the piece(s) above them have been removed

Dropping
After the initial placement you may drop any pieces that are added to your hand during the game on any unoccupied square on the board. However, you can drop allied pieces directly onto the Catapult, Fortress, Ninja, and Jounin.

Movement and attacking
Moving or attacking take a turn.
A tier one unit cannot move over enemy units except for the Ninja, Archer and Jounin. Tier two and three units can move over enemy units.

There are two types of attacking, mobile and immobile.

Mobile attack: You attack an enemy piece within your piece’s range, occupy its position, and add the enemy piece to your hand. When attacking another tower with a mobile strike, you can only attack the top-most tier, no matter how high your own tower may be. This means that when you attack a tower, you replace the top-most tier.

Immobile attacks: Only used when moving within the same tower. You attack the piece above or below your piece in a tower and add it to your hand. If the piece was on top, you simply capture it. If the piece was below, the pieces above it descend to a lower tier. You cannot attack a piece that is two tiers above or below your piece.


The Gungi board.
This is the GungiBoard image I designed for the purposes of playing Gungi on stickpage.

Gungi is played on a nine by nine board. When you drop or move a piece, you will call out the pieces name and state which square it is being dropped on or moved to.
Example: I'm moving Ninja to e5.

While the Gungi board is only nine by nine, there is a third dimension above the board for tiers. Essentially making Gungi nine by nine by three. It's important to call out when a piece is moving or being dropped into this dimension.
Example: I'm moving Ninja to h7, tier two.

Pieces that are on the board are called active pieces, while captured pieces are taken from the board are flipped and added to your hand.

The Horizontal axis is referred to as rows and the vertical axis is referred to as columns. Remember, left to right, rows. Front to back, columns.


The pieces.

This is the black and white archer piece images I've created, the images you'll see later in this tutorial will not be the same as the pieces we'll be using. Each piece will have its name in the center to represent it, so you can understand the pieces role and movement. Each piece has a front and a back, when you capture a piece you will flip it and add it to your hand, from front to back and vise versa, that piece becomes your color when you capture it. Except for the commander which has no back and once captured means defeat for that player.
Example: Black Archer becomes White Arrow when captured and White Archer becomes Black Arrow when captured.

Subsequently if you capture an enemy back piece, it becomes your front piece and you add it to your hand.
Example: Black Arrow becomes White Archer and White Arrow becomes Black Archer.

Each player will start the game with Twenty Three pieces in their hand.
List of Pieces:
Front, Back and amount.
Commander has no back piece. x1
Captain and Pistol x2
Samurai and Pike x2
Ninja and Jounin x3
Catapult and Lance x1
Fortress and Lance x1
Hidden Dragon and Dragon King x1
Prodigy and Phoenix x1
Archer and Arrow x2
Soldier and Bronze x7
Soldier and Silver x1
Soldier and Gold x1




Please keep in mind the images here should be reversed for the purposes of your opponents unit movements.