Leap Frog is a multi-player abstract strategy board game. Several players can play at once which makes it great for parties and family get-togethers. The game is an old classic, and may have derived from Solitaire and draughts. It is essentially a multi-player version of Solitaire. The game was described by the game historian H. J. R. Murray in his book published in 1898, along with a variant that he invented using different colored pieces each with different point values. Both the older variant and Murray's variant use a square board with 15 to 18 squares on each side. All the pieces are laid out in the beginning of the game covering the whole board. On each player's turn, a piece is chosen to hop over and capture other pieces on the board. The winner is the one who captures the most pieces (in the older variant) or obtains the most points (in Murray's variant) when it's impossible to capture anymore. The older variant was played in England where it may have originated from. The game is also known to be spelled as one word, Leapfrog.
Contents
Murray never stated that the moves are limited to orthogonal directions. The game might still work with diagonal moves.
An online software variant by BrainKing called Froglet is similar to Murray's variant. The only differences are that the size of the board is smaller (only a 12 x 12 square board), the order of play among the players is determined before the game commences and only the first player may remove a piece from anywhere on the board for his or her first move followed by capturing moves by the short leap thereafter by all players, and the color distribution among pieces is different (66 green pieces, 51 yellow pieces, 21 red pieces, and 6 blue pieces) with 1 point for a green, 2 points for a yellow, 3 points for a red, and 4 points for a blue.
A variant of Chinese Checkers called Capture resembles the old variant of Leap Frog, except in Capture the six-pointed star-shaped board of Chinese Checkers is used, and specifically only the central hexagon region of the board. In addition, the central point of the board is vacant at the beginning of the game in Capture, whereas the board is completely filled in Leap Frog.
Setup
A square board with 15 to 18 squares in length on each side is used. It is best to use a marble board or peg board. The number of pieces needed is n2. For example, a 15 x 15 square board requires 152 = 225 pieces.
In Murray's variant, the pieces have different colors with different point values. The number of pieces per color are divided as follows: 1 green for every 2 red, for every 3 yellow, for every 4 white. In a 15 x 15 square board that would be 22 green, 45 red, 68 yellow, and 90 white pieces. Green pieces are worth 4 points, red pieces are worth 3 points, yellow pieces are worth 2 points, and white pieces are worth 1 point.
The game starts with all the pieces occupying all the squares (or holes) of the board. Only one piece may occupy a square (or hole).
Similarly in Murray's variant the colored pieces are distributed randomly throughout the board occupying all the squares (or holes).