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Djambi is a four-player game on a 9x9 Board. Each player plays alone, but temporary alliances are encouraged, and the players are allowed to 'counsel' (promise, threat, supplicate...) one another. <P>A player has nine pieces: a Chief, an Assassin, a Reporter, a Provocator, a Necromobile and four Militants. The Militants move as two-square Queens, the other pieces as full Queens. When a Chief is killed, his owner is eliminated from the game and the killer takes over all his remaining pieces. <P>All killed pieces (the pieces are flat disks with one black face) remain on the Board and hamper the moves of the living pieces. <P>The Chief, the Assassin and the Militants capture by replacement, but a piece captured by the Chief or the Militants is dropped on any empty square while a piece captured by the Assassin is dropped on the Assassin's departure square. The Reporter captures by orthogonal contact after moving, which sounds like it should unbalance the game. The Provocator and the Necromobile do not kill. The Provocator can replace any enemy living piece and place it anywhere on the board (excepted on the central square, if that piece isn't a Chief). The Necromobile can replace any dead piece and place it anywhere on the board (same exception). <P>A player whose Chief stands on the the central square, or Labyrinth, plays at every other turn. The Labyrinth can be occupied only by a Chief, though an Assassin, a Militant, a Provocator or a Necromobile can go on the Labyrinth to kill or move a Chief (in the latter case, a dead Chief killed by the Reporter) and move away immediately, by playing again in the same turn. <P>A Chief whose all neighbors are dead is killed, unless he stands on the Labyrinth. <P><br>You can download the rules (in French, but with graphics) <A href='http://reglesdejeux.free.fr/regles/djamb_rg.pdf'>there</A>.

An English explanantion of the game can be found in the second half of <a href='http://www.gamecabinet.com/sumo/Issue22/node11.html'>this page</a>. A picture of the board can be found <a href='http://www.abstractstrategy.com/djambi.html'>here</a>.

So what if the player can't move but the chief is neither captured nor surrounded by corpses? What if the chief is penned in by his own pieces, who are penned in by corpses? And has no necromobile or the one that moves live pieces. I've just started trying to learn this and have had this twice in two games. Does the player just try to convince someone to let them out or are they out of the game? Whats the rules on that? Its kind of a stalemate.