Introduction

Dastan is a turn-taking two-player strategy game which uses similar moves to Chess. Each player has a Kotla (Fortress) piece, a Mirza (Ruler) piece and four standard pieces. Players take turns to move one of their five pieces around on board, which by default is 6×6. At the start of the default game each player’s Mirza is located inside their Kotla, with their four standard pieces in a line in front of the Kotla respectively.

Standard pieces and the Mirza piece can move around on the board using a number of move options called Ryott, Chowkidar, Faujdar, Jazair, and Cuirassier which are presented to each player in the form of a move option queue. This means that pieces do not have a fixed move that they can make but the move for the piece will be determined by the move option (or move type) chosen from the queue that turn. Different move options have different position possibilities which they can move to relative to the position of the piece they are applied to. A player can select any move in positions 1 to 3 from this queue and use it to move any of their own standard pieces or Mirza. Moves carry a points cost, however, depending on their position in the queue. Players are also offered an alternative move option at random which they can use to replace one of the moves in their queue. This again carries a points cost.

Opponent pieces can be 'captured' by a player landing one of their own pieces on the square occupied by the opponent piece. Capturing pieces gains a player a different number of points depending on if the player has captured a Mirza or a standard piece. Points are also gained by a player if one of their pieces or Mirza occupies their own or opponent's Kotla.

The game ends when a player either moves their Mirza into their opponent’s Kotla or they capture their opponent’s Mirza. The winner of the game is the player with the most points when the game ends.