Qurush

by Jonathan Leistiko

Object

Slide and flip cubes on a shared game board to create your secret pattern. Don’t get squished!

You Need

A 6×6 board
16 six-sided dice for two players. 25 six-sided dice for 4 players. You can also use Qurush qubes. The qubes look neat and are larger than standard dice, but it takes a bit of time to assemble them and they take up a lot of space once they’re built. On a Qurush qube, the black face = “6” and the white face = “1”. These rules assume you’re using standard dice, but refer to them as qubes.
A unique pawn for each player.
Pencil and paper for each player.

Setting Up

Put the board where everyone can reach it.
Two-player Qurush is played on a 5×5 board. Four-player Qurush is played on a 6×6 board.
Put your pawn in an empty corner. This is your home corner.
Put put one qube with its “6” face up and the “5” face towards the bottom edge on every square not on the edge of the board.
The object of Qurush is to create a specific pattern on the board. You secretly select your pattern at the start of the game. If you’re playing four-player Qurush, choose a 4×1 linear pattern and a 2×2 square pattern for your secret goals. Your patterns must consist of the numbers 2 through 5. You may not use “6”. If you’re playing with two players, only choose a 2×2 pattern.
Choose a player to go first.

Play

You start your turn with 7 action points (AP). You spend action points to take actions. Your turn ends when you have less than three action points, or if you declare that your turn is over. Action points left over at the end of your turn disappear – they do not carry over from turn to turn.

The actions you can purchase are:

Move (3 AP) – Move your pawn to an adjacent space. Diagonal spaces are not adjacent. If there is a qube in that space, climb on top of the qube and stand there.

Push (7 AP) – Move into the same space as an adjacent qube (instead of onto it) and move that qube into the space beyond it. Continue to do the same with any qubes or pawns it displaces. If a pawn would be moved into a space with another qube or off the board, put it on top of the qube that would have crushed it. Like pawns, qubes can not leave the board. If a line of qubes can not be pushed because the last qube is against the edge of the board, then you may not push that line of qubes. If a pawn is on top of a sliding qube, the pawn moves with the qube.

Pull (7 AP) – Move to an adjacent space. If the space you just left is vacant, you may pull a qube that is adjacent to that space into it.

Slide (4 AP) – Move a qube that’s adjacent to you into an empty space adjacent to it.

Flip (4 AP) – Flip a qube in an adjacent space onto any face that’s adjacent to the face that’s currently face-up.

When your turn is done, play passes to the left.

Winning

Ones are wild cards and can count as any number (other than 6).

If one of your secret goal patterns is on the board at the end of any turn, call out, “Qurush!” Show everyone your secret goal(s), and point out your pattern. You win!

Variants

Multiple Agents – Any player can act through any pawn.

Wraparound – The board wraps around. Pawns are pushed to the other side, just like blocks are. Pawns are crushed when pressed ‘tween two blocks.

Squeesh! – Pawns do not hop onto moving qubes that would have crushed them. Instead, they are crushed (removed from the board). It costs 4 AP to put your pawn back on the board in any corner.

True North – Designate one side of the board as “north”. All goal drawings must indicate where “north” is on them.

Origin and Credits

Ever have an idea in the back of your head that you keep coming back to over and over, but it never seems quite ready to congeal? I’ve been noodling over a game like this for months and months; probably more than a year now. A burst of inspiration hit me as I was drifting off to sleep at about 10 PM on November 27th, 2005. I scribbled a few ideas on a notpad I keep on my bedstand, found them the next day, and mocked up the Qurush qube template. I wrote the first draft of these rules the following day.

I originally intended for Qurush to be played with the Qurush qubes and not with traditional dice. The ammount of time it took me to build just one Qurush die took so long that making y’all build 16 of them before you could even play the game would virtually guarantee that Qurush would never get played. If anyone out there ever makes a full Qurush set, please take a photo and send it to me? Thanks!

Big thanks to Sharon for playtesting with me. She was the first to realize that the original Qurush rules ensured that the first player would always win the game.