How to play Ludo

The shared ring is 52 squares long and runs all the way round the cross. Each seat joins it at its own start square, and the four start squares are 13 apart, one to each arm of the board. From there a token walks 51 squares of the ring before it turns off into its own colour.

Eight of the 52 are safe, and each of those carries a printed star. The four start squares are four of them. The other four sit eight squares further on from each start square. A token standing on a star cannot be sent home by anybody, so two colours can share one quite happily, and the eight of them are the shelters you plan a lap around.

Counting from your own yard, that means you are safe on the 1st, 9th, 14th, 22nd, 27th, 35th, 40th and 48th square of your lap. There are always eight of them, whether two seats are playing or four, so at a two-seat table two of the eight belong to corners nobody is sitting in. Those are free parking for whoever reaches them.

1. Roll the die. Tap it where it sits on the board, or press the button at the bottom of the screen. They do the same thing.
2. Choose which token uses the number and tap it. A ring is drawn on every square one of your tokens could land on, so you can see all the answers before you pick one. Tap the token again, or press Move, and it walks.

Roll, then choose. That is the whole turn, and the second half is where the game lives: bring a new token out, run one towards the column, or spend the number chasing somebody down the board.

You cannot pass, and you cannot keep a number for later. If the face can be used at all, it must be. If none of your tokens can use it, the turn simply ends and the next seat rolls, and that is just as true of a six as of anything else.

When the number can only be used one way, the app plays it for you instead of asking. Four tokens still penned and a six is four taps with one outcome, and so is most of the endgame. A tap with one possible result is not a decision, so the board makes it and moves on.

Every token begins in your yard and needs a six to leave it. Roll one and a token is placed on your start square. Placed, not walked: the six is the key to the gate and is spent on opening it. A token that has just come out is one square into its lap, not six.

A six does not force you to come out. If you already have tokens on the ring, the same six can walk one of those instead, and quite often that is the better use of it.

Coming out never sends anybody home, because your start square is one of the eight stars. An opponent can park a token on your start square and sit there perfectly safe, and from inside the yard there is nothing you can do about it.

If the sixes are being unkind there is a setting that lets a one open the gate as well. A one frees a token exactly as a six does, but it does not hand you another roll, so the turn ends there. With tokens both penned and on the board, a one is then a choice rather than an order.

Land on a square an opponent is standing on and their token goes straight back to their yard, all the way to the beginning. That is the whole of it. There is no bonus, no points and no extra distance. The reward is the die coming straight back to you.

You take what is standing on the square you finish on, and nothing else. Tokens you walk over on the way are untouched, however many of them there are.

If two or three opponent tokens are sharing one plain square, landing there sends every one of them home together. Your own tokens are never in danger from each other, and any number of yours may stand on one square, so in your own colour it is only a crowd.

None of this happens on a starred square, in anybody's column, or in the middle. Once a token turns off the ring it is out of reach for the rest of the game.

After 51 squares of the shared ring your token turns off into a column of five squares in your own colour. Nobody else may walk there and nothing can be captured there. Five squares, and the sixth step is the middle, which is 57 from the yard.

The finish is exact. A token two short of the middle needs a two and can do nothing with a three, a four, a five or a six. That is not a house rule and there is no setting to soften it. Late in a game you will spend whole turns waiting for one particular number, and the faces you cannot use go to whichever of your tokens is still further back.

Every token that reaches the middle hands you another roll, always, with no setting attached. And the game stops dead the moment one seat has all four there. Nobody plays on for second place, so the board is put away exactly as it stands.

Three things hand the die straight back to you: a six, sending an opponent home, and getting a token to the middle. The first two can be switched off before the game starts. The third cannot.

Only one reason is announced even when two apply at once, and the order it picks from is capture, then home, then six. A turn handed back this way has no limit of its own, so a good run can go on for a while.

The exception is three sixes in a row. On the third one the turn ends before the face can be used at all. Nothing is undone: the two tokens the first two sixes moved stay exactly where they are. This is not the version where the last token moved goes back to the yard.

A face nothing can use is not a reason to roll again either. There is nothing to roll again for, so the roll is wasted, the log says so, and the turn passes to the next seat.