About Bushka

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About Bushka

Here's the odd one out in the Draughts family - not draughts at all really, more of an adopted species. Bushka's way of capture originates in Fanorona, a game from Madagascar. The rules of Fanorona can be found in many books on abstract games. Bushka basically employs the idea of linear-movement and linear-capture to translate the idea of capture by contact into a draughts-like framework. I consider Bushka to be a draughts game the same way I consider an electric car to be a car. It's essentially the same vehicle powered by a different engine. Bushka looks like a draughts game and behaves like a draughts game. I wouldn't mind a new class of "Contact Draughts" games, of which Bushka is the first representative.

There's this other thing: Bushka got off on the wrong foot: it started out on a 9x11 board, with only three ranks between the forces. This made for openings like a wolf trap, narrow as a tightrope and severely punishing if deviated from. Beginners usually didn't know what hit them and turned to more forgiving games.
Fun as the charting of this minefield was, it eventually became clear that it did little justice to the beautiful and intricate tactics of the middle- and endgames: the game required more freedom in the opening. The solution was simple: put it on a 10x10 board. The forces are now 4 rows apart, leaving ample room for different opening strategies. Although there are two men less per side, the actual number of different opening moves increases from 13 to 24 because there's no vertical axis of symmetry.
The rather extensive opening theory of the 9x11 version is down the drain of course - it was great to chart it out and it gave me a deep respect for the game's resources. But it is no longer applicable and in the light of the greater freedom the opening now provides, the emphasis should be on finding an outline of the main alleys of strategy and making an inventory of the accompanying tactics.
Many of the 9x11 problems have been translated to the new board - a display of karate-like tactics for those who want to see what Bushka is about.