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How to Play Aggravation With a Chinese Checker Board

Many Chinese checker boards come with a layout for Aggravation on the other side, so you can just flip the board over to play it. Aggravation is similar to the board game "Sorry" -- you have four tokens that you have to roll a specific number (1 or 6) to bring out of the home row. Then, you use the dice to move the tokens around a board. Frequently these are square, but the shape varies; some are in the shape of a character. Even if you have a standard checker board on the other side of your Chinese checker board -- or just blank wood -- you can play Aggravation on a Chinese checker board layout.

Things You'll Need

4 beads per player (same color)
Die

Instructions

- 1
  Take four marbles and put them in a row in one of the triangles that form the edge of the Chinese checker board. Place the row along one of the sides of the triangle so that the first marble is at the end of that side, bordering on the main hexagon.
- 2
  Roll the die to see who will go first. If you roll the highest number, you get to go first, and play will go to your left.
- 3
  Roll the die to start moving your marbles around the hexagon. You have to roll a 1 or 6 to pull a marble out of home row.
- 4
  Keep rolling the dice, moving pieces out onto the main route (the perimeter of the hexagon). Once they are out, you can move them the number of pieces on the die. Your goal is to get all four of your dice around the board and back to the entrance to the home row. You must get exact rolls to place your pieces back in the home row. For example, if you already have a piece in the second spot on home row, you need to roll a "2" to get it into the last spot before you can place a piece in the third spot -- no jumping is allowed. If you land on the same spot as your opponent's piece while traveling around the board, though, you send his piece back to his home row.
- 5
  Aggravate your opponents by ending your move on their marbles. If you do that, your opponent will have to move that marble back to home row. If you can get your marbles all the way around, you win.

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