How to play Breakthrough

Breakthrough is a two-player race game played with nothing but pawns. Each side starts with two full rows of pawns facing each other, and the first player to march a single pawn all the way to the opponent's back row wins. The rules fit in two sentences, yet every move is a small decision about attack, defence and timing.

There are no dice, no cards and no hidden information, so every win is earned. The game was invented by Dan Troyka in 2000 and has since become a favourite of puzzle and strategy players because it is easy to learn but surprisingly deep: a single careless gap in your defence can let an enemy pawn slip through and end the game in a few moves.

How to play on skill.games

• Start a game. The settings window opens first. Pick a difficulty and a board size, then press PLAY.
• Make a move. Tap one of your pawns. Green dots appear on every square it can step to, and red rings mark enemy pawns it can capture. Tap one to move, or tap a different pawn to change your mind.
• Who moves first. You always play the pawns at the bottom of the screen, moving up, and you always make the first move.
• The score line at the top shows how many pawns each side has left.
• Pause. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game., with options to resume, start a new game or switch the sound off.
• Saving. Your game is saved after every move. If you leave mid-game, choose CONTINUE next time to pick up where you stopped.
• Results. The end screen shows the pawns each side captured, what decided the game and how many moves were played, plus your wins, losses, win rate and streaks for that board and difficulty.

Rules

Setup. The board is square. Each player fills the two rows nearest to them with pawns, so on the 6 × 6 board each side has 12 pawns, on 7 × 7 it has 14 and on 8 × 8 it has 16. Your pawns start on the bottom two rows and the computer's on the top two.

Moving. Players take turns moving exactly one pawn. A pawn always moves one square forward, toward the opponent's side:

• straight ahead, but only onto an empty square;
• diagonally forward, either onto an empty square or onto a square holding an enemy pawn.

Pawns never move sideways or backward, and there is no jumping.

Capturing. A pawn captures by moving diagonally forward onto an enemy pawn, which is removed from the board. Capturing is never compulsory. A pawn cannot capture straight ahead, so two pawns that meet head-on simply block each other.

Winning. You win as soon as any one of these happens:

1. One of your pawns reaches the far row (the top row for you).
2. You capture every enemy pawn.
3. Your opponent has no legal move on their turn.

There are no draws in Breakthrough: every game ends with a winner.

Strategy tips

• Guard your home row. The computer only needs one pawn to get through. Keeping a few pawns on your back row for as long as possible means any intruder can still be captured before it reaches the end.
• Count the race. When both sides have a pawn running free, count how many steps each needs. If the computer's pawn arrives first, you must stop it now rather than hope to win the race.
• Trade with a purpose. Before capturing, check whether the opponent can recapture, and whether the swap opens a path for your pawns or for theirs.
• Move in pairs and chains. A pawn that has a friendly pawn diagonally behind it is protected: if it is captured, you can take back. Lone pawns that run ahead of the group are easy targets.
• Use the blocking rule. Because pawns cannot capture straight ahead, a pawn placed directly in front of an enemy pawn stops it cold, and that enemy can only escape diagonally.
• Avoid wasting tempo early. Early on, quiet moves that keep your structure solid usually beat a premature charge. The side that runs out of safe moves first is forced to open a gap.
• Look for breakthroughs, literally. When your pawns outnumber the defenders on one side of the board, a sacrifice can tear the defence apart and leave one of your pawns with a clear road to the end.

Difficulty levels

• Easy looks only at its own move. About a third of its moves are picked at random, and some of those can hand you a win, so it is a gentle way to learn the rules.
• Normal looks at its move and your reply. It plays a random move only now and then, and usually checks that the random move does not give you an instant win.
• Hard looks several moves ahead and almost never plays a random move. You will need a solid defence and careful counting to beat it.
• Crazy looks the furthest ahead, thinks the longest and never plays a random move. Every level will always take a winning move when it sees one.

Modes

You can choose between three board sizes:

• 6 × 6, Quick with 12 pawns each. Only four rows separate the armies at the start, so contact comes almost at once and games are short sprints. This is the default.
• 7 × 7, Medium with 14 pawns each. A little more room to build a structure before the fighting starts.
• 8 × 8, Classic with 16 pawns each, the board the game was designed for. With four empty rows in the middle and more pawns on a wider front, games are longer and plans have more time to develop.

Statistics are kept separately for each board and difficulty.