The genre of abstract strategy games is undoubtedly the one with the richest history. Ancient sets of Chess, Checkers, Go, Shogi, and Mancala are still being discovered by archaeologists, simultaneously making it hard to pinpoint a date of creation, and proving board games' place of importance through the ages. Abstracts tend to have a very hard- core set of followers: players will devote their entire lives to one game, and in parts of Eastern Europe, Chess players are celebrities, scoring lucrative advertising deals and being followed by the paparazzi. New abstracts however, such as Hey, That's My Fish, by Finno-German team Alvydas Jakeliunas and G nter Cornett, have also found a place among the heavyweights of abstract games. Jackhammer is a fairly faithful analogue of that game, but employs a Dr Reiner Knizia-like scoring system (more on the Doctor later). —description from the designer This game is part of Femtitva, a collection of 10 games by Scott Huntington that were inspired by popular modern games but can be played with a traditional deck of cards. In Jackhammer, a deck of Aces through 9s is dealt into a 6x6 face-up grid, and each player puts their "worker" (a unique picture card) on a different Ace. On their turn player moves his worker in any straight line (orthogonally or diagonally) as far as they wish onto a free card, and they take the card they started from (creating a hole in the layout) and put it in front of them. Movement may not pass over a hole or another worker; if they can't move they take the card they're on and have no more turns. Players earn points for the pip values of the cards they've taken, and the highest pip value total for the suit they've scored the lowest points for determines the winner. —user summary

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