So, my kids love to play chess, but not all of their friends know how to play and (after playing chess) checkers was a bit boring to them. Since they both love Harry Potter we (mostly mom) invented Quidditch rules, which makes the game way more fun.

The game works like this:

First you have your standard checkers board and two opposing team pieces. Then, you have your "oval rows" which are two extra rows that turn the square board into an oval. Don't worry, I have a picture to add to this verbal description. The first row (off the board) is a row of 4 squares (each corresponding with two regular board squares and the size of 4 squares total), which is where the keeper stays and the two chaser pieces start, In the next row, there are 3 spots forming the end of the oval, which is where the three goal wedges are (the center wedge radiates out from the midline of the board)--the keeper uses the 4 squares to defend the three goals.

There is a bludger (we usually use a chess piece, for our extra pieces, but I have a plan to standardize this and make it as an actual board with dedicated pieces as a Yule gift for Chickadee), which starts on the sidelines. Either way, the bludger is claimed from the sidelines by the first person to jump the opponent. The claimer of the bludger can place the bludger from anywhere of their starting two rows. The bludger can move in any direction for one continuous move, but it can only move once before it goes back to the sidelines until the next jumped player. If you use the bludger, it takes the place of your checker piece move. The bludger can be used to knock the quaffle from a chaser (which puts it back in the center circle), or knock a player off the field. Beaters aren't pieces on the board per se, but rather like a chip that can be turned in as a "block" to reclaim the quaffle or piece. You get two beater pieces, so you have to choose carefully.

The quaffle starts in a center circle overlaying the center 4 squares. The player whose checker piece passes the midline of the field/board claims the quaffle for one of their chasers. Chasers move like a bishop in chess and start from the outermost squares in the extra row of 4--their goal is to make a goal in the opposing sides goal wedges without having the quaffle stolen by a beater or "stolen" (by an oponnent checker piece that can take repossession by jumping a chaser that gets blocked in the board. The keeper can also stop the chaser by moving into the goal in the immediate move after (from one of the 4 squares out front). The only move to counter this is to already have your other chaser in the goal aready, keeping the keeper out. Movement in these squares is such that pieces in the two right squares can move into the right goal wedge, pieces in the two left to the left wedge, and pieces in the two center squares (the mid-right and mid-left) into the center wedge. Once a goal has been attempted, chasers have to return to their side of the pitch/board where they started.

There isn't a seeker piece (because YOU are the seeker, lol...), but the snitch is a gold star on the underside of one of the checker pieces. When you put your pieces on the board, crown-side down (the side in which one of them has the star), you and your opponent get to "shuffle" each others pieces for 10 Harry Potter seconds (which is like a mississippi, but instead goes 1 Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts, 2....which is best counted out by a neutral 3rd party). When you get kinged, the pieces get flipped (rather than the stacking method). If the golden snitch is found, the game is automatically called for points (we will get to that in a minute). If the golden snitch is NOT found (ie, because the piece has been jumped) or is known that it will not be found (because someone looked at the jumped peices), the game continues as a regular checker game (with some extra pieces) until one player can make no more checker moves, only has one regular checker piece left, or it is obviously a draw.

Points are (of course) awarded as 10 points per goal and 150 points for the snitch. BUT, the players also get 10 points per kinged checker piece and 5 per unkinged checker piece on the board.


Right now we play this with a checkers set and some extra chess pieces and a gold star sticker on a checkers board with some posterboard at either end...the quaffle is a button. But, my plan is to try and get the stuff to make an actual board for Chickadee for Yule (I'm making Sharkbait a wooden Minecraft chess set). The chess peices would come in the 4 house colors (of course only 2 teams play, but you can play as any house), the bludger would be black, the quaffle red and quaffle-ish looking (if possible), the chaser pieces would be white with the house colors or mascot or other symbol or the same color but a different size or shape as the rest of the "team" pieces, with the keeper the same color but a different shape (if I did it right, I could keep just two keeper pieces and 4 chasers, but have them each painted as one house on one side, and another house of the other side. The beater pieces would be wooden tokens.

I'd take a pic of our actual game, but its packed...so I drew a rough representation of what the board looks like...

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