Pods is a two-player board game invented by Vincent Everaert in 2010. There are two variants of the rules: "Standard" and "Advanced".

• Board and Pieces
• Standard rules
• Advanced rules

PODS is played on a board with a grid of 36 points, some of the points are connected with lines. The board orientation is chosen randomly (i.e. it can be rotated by 90^o, 180^o or 270^o). The adjacent points on the board are said to be connected if there is a line between them.

There are two players in the game: White and Black. Each player initially has 14 different pods of their color on their hand. Pods are pieces, which have a number of short and / or long legs pointing in 8 directions (diagonal and orthogonal). Below is the list of all available pods:

White pods:

Black pods:

The game begins with an empty board.

Starting with White, players take turns placing a pod of their color on some empty point on the board. At the beginning of the game the White player can only choose to place one of his two bipods (a two-legged pod). A pod always faces its owner, the eyes watching the player.

A player can place his pod on any empty point that meets both of the following two conditions:

1. It is forbidden to place a pod on a point  where all of its legs are blocked, i.e. on the point  with no connected adjacent empty points in the directions of pod's legs. Important remark: it is allowed to place a pod in such a way that blocks other pods (both opponent and player ones) already on the board. Below are some examples of valid and invalid pod placements:

The white bipod cannot be placed on the specified point because both of his legs would be blocked on that position: there is no empty point in the direction of the left leg and the point on the right is not connected.		The white pod cannot be placed on the specified point because all of his three legs would be blocked on that position: the point in the lower left  direction is not connected, two other directions (the upper left and the right ones) are blocked with other pods.		The white pod can be placed on the specified point because one of his legs (the upper right one) is not blocked.

2. It is forbidden to place a pod on a point  where it attacks an opponent's pod or is attacked by an opponent's pod. A pod attacks all connected adjacent points in the direction of its short legs and all the connected points on a straight line in the direction of long legs.
    

   The white 4-legged pod cannot be placed on the specified points because these points are under attack of the black pod. All the points in the lower right and upper right directions are legal spots because they are not connected to the black pod (inspite of the the corresponding legs of the black pod)		In addition to the forbidden points specified on the previous picture, this white 4-legged pod cannot be placed on the specified points because it would attack the black pod from any of these points. Note, that it can be placed on the points marked with the green rings because this white pod cannot attack the black pod from there (this white pod has short legs in those directions)		This picture shows all the legal points for the white pod shown on the two previous pictures.

The game ends when one of the players is not able to put any of his remaining pods. The other player wins the game.

The game begins with an empty board.

Starting with White, players take turns making one of the following:

1. A player can place a pod of their color on any empty point on the board where it does not attack an opponent's pod and is not attacked by an opponent's pod (a pod attacks all connected adjacent points in the direction of its short legs and all the connected points on a straight line in the direction of long legs). At the beginning of the game the White player can only choose to place one of his two bipods (a two-legged pod).
    
2. A player can move one of his pods already on the board. A pod can move to a connected adjacent empty point in the direction of its short leg or to any of connected points on a straight line in the direction of its long leg. A pod cannot jump over other pods of either color. Important remark: it is allowed that the moved pod attacks some opponent's pod from its new position or is under attack of some opponent's pod.

After placing or moving a pod, the player takes off the board all blocked pods (i.e. pods with no connected adjacent empty points in the directions of pod's legs). All the blocked player's pods are returned back to the player while all the blocked opponent's pods are placed aside (i.e. they are not returned to the opponent). It may certainly happen that the moved or placed player's pod will be among the blocked pods.

A player wins a game when he gets rid of all of his pods (note, that those pods, which are returned back to the player, must be placed again). A player also wins a game when his opponent doesn't have any legal moves.