Laska
BGG rank
BGG #15,774
BGG rating
6.5

Laska

1911

Rules assistance for Laska

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2 players
  • 30 min
  • Complexity 2.6/5

For 2 players

Rules assistant for Laska

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Laska is a board game released in 1911 for 2 players and 30 minutes per game. It was designed by Emanuel Lasker and its main mechanics are Player Elimination, Square Grid, and Grid Movement.

Similar games

About the game

World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker developed Laska (a.k.a. Lasca), a variant of the Checkers Family, in 1911. The game board and play resembles that of Checkers, but captured pieces remain on the board and can possibly be freed later in the game. Each player starts the game on the 7x7 board with eleven soldiers. On a turn, a player moves one soldier diagonally forward one space. If a capture is available, then the player must make that capture, trapping the captured piece underneath the capturing one; if the newly captured piece had previously had one or more pieces underneath it, then those pieces are now free to move in future turns. If a soldier reaches the opponent's back row, it's flipped and promoted to an officer, which can move diagonally in all directions. The game continues until either a player can't move or a player has no pieces remaining on the board. In both cases, this player loses the game. Laska was influenced by Bashni.

Publishers

  • F.X. Schmid
  • (Public Domain)
  • Fratelli Fabbri Editori (Fabbri Editore)
  • L. P. Septímio
  • WOSI "Wspólna Sprawa"
  • nestorgames
  • The Game Crafter, LLC
  • Hans Joseph GmbH

Questions and answers

Laska supports 2 players according to the catalogue. This is the publisher’s listed player count, so the game is designed for exactly that number of participants. Variants for other group sizes, if any, are described in the rulebook of your edition, so check it before setting up a different configuration.