Tigers Bears & Dragons
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Tigers Bears & Dragons
© 2024-26 Alvanno LLC
aka. Island Champion© 2013-14 Alvanno
Eliminate all of the other player's pieces (Tigers or Bears), then conquer the two central islands. If you're in control (alone or with a trapped piece) on both islands, or in control of one while the other is empty, you've won the game.
Island Champion is a 2-player game, but 3 kinds of pieces take turns: Tigers, Bears, and Dragons. The Dragons' loyalty alternates between the Tigers and Bears, allowing both players to move the Dragons.
The Dragons start out loyal to the Bears; so the Tigers get the first move of the game, but the Bears control the first Dragon move.
The movemeter at the top-left points to which piece's turn it is, and turns to the right. Each full rotation of the movemeter is a round of the game, starting with Tigers, then Bears, then Dragons. An arc links the Dragons to either Tigers or Bears, showing who they're loyal to and who controls their current or next turn. After each of the Dragons' turns, they switch loyalty.
Half the squares are islands, and the others water. In this game when there's a contest between pieces on sand and in water, it's an advantage to be on an island.
All pieces can move one square in any direction, or two squares if it's mostly over clear land. A piece on land can move 2 squares diagonally but only 1 square up/down/right/left. A piece in water can move 2 squares up/down/right/left but only 1 square diagonally.
You can challenge any piece (except your own) that's next to your square, in any direction.
When you select a piece, arrows appear that show all the moves you can make. Arrows for challenges are colored to hint what the outcomes are. Each outcome depends on how much advantage or disadvantage you would have in that contest.
To see the outcome of a move, hold the square the arrow is pointing to, and read the line above the board. While still holding your finger or the mouse button down, you can check other possible moves to see their outcomes.
If you tap, click, or release your hold on a square that's a possible move, that makes the move. If you were just holding a square to see what the outcome would be, you can cancel the move by sliding your finger or the mouse cursor (without releasing) back to the piece you selected to move.
When a piece challenges another to a contest, it ends one of 4 ways:
| Win | Defender eliminated |
| Trap | Challenger traps defender |
| Draw | Challenger and defender swap positions |
| Lose | Defender traps challenger |
Which way it ends depends on advantages, which are explained below.
There are 3 kinds of advantages in this game that affect the outcome in a challenge:
| Terrain | Being on higher terrain than the opponent is an advantage. |
| Alertness | Being more ready than the opponent is an advantage. |
| Initiative | Being on the offensive gives you an advantage. |
The outcome is figured by adding up the difference in advantages. In this game all advantages are equally important, so the total is easy to figure, but the game adds them up for you and shows colored arrows and hint messages as in this table:
| Advantage | Arrow | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Heavy (+3) | Bold Green | Defender eliminated, any trapped piece of defender remains there unless it's your own, in which case it's freed to your previous square ★ |
| Medium (+2) | Green | Defender eliminated, any trapped piece of defender escapes to your previous square ★ |
| Slight (+1) | Yellow | Challenger traps defender, any trapped piece of defender escapes to your previous square ★ |
| Even | Red | Challenger and defender swap positions, but any trapped pieces remain where they were |
| Disadvantage | Bold Red | Defender traps challenger, any trapped piece of defender escapes to your previous square ★ |
★ When a piece escapes to your previous square during a contest, if that square had a trapped piece, which piece gets on top depends on advantage of terrain (only) unless the terrain is the same, in which case the formerly trapped piece of your previous square traps the piece escaping from the square you moved to (the piece staying in its square has advantage over the fleeing piece).
Example: If an alert Tiger in water wants to challenge a resting Bear on an island, the Tiger has the advantages of initiative and alertness, while the Bear has the advantage of terrain. So the challenger has 2 advantages, minus the defender's 1 advantage, for a total of +1, which means the Tiger has a slight advantage in the contest (the hint arrow would be yellow).
Every piece is either alert or resting. Two of each type of piece can be alert at a time.
Alert pieces have a star on them -- whether a Gold or Silver star, the advantage is the same. Gold stars mark the pieces that were alerted most recently, while Silver stars mark pieces that have been alert the longest. When you alert another piece while two of your pieces are already alert, the one with the Silver star is put to rest.
(For color-blind players, the top point of Silver stars aims straight up, and on Gold stars it aims up and to the right.)
When it's your turn and any of your pieces is next to a Dragon, you can bribe the Dragons 1 coin to allow you to trap a Dragon with no risk.
When the Dragons are loyal to the other player, you can bribe them 2 coins to switch loyalty for their next move. (But you can't do that in consecutive turns, or in the 1st 4 rounds.)
The dragons then offer their loyalty back to the other player for 3 coins. If the other player accepts that, the dragons will refund you the 2 coins you had paid them.
If you challenge a Dragon when the Dragons are loyal to you, without bribing them, they will switch loyalty to your opponent for their next turn.
It is not betrayal if you take over an already trapped dragon while you're challenging the piece that's holding that dragon.
The endgame starts when all of the Tigers or Bears have been eliminated. At that point the eliminated player has lost the game, but may still be able to achieve a draw (tie).
In the endgame, the Dragons stop alternating loyalty and are under the control of the losing player -- except when bribed by the other player.
As long as your browser is set to allow pages to store persistent data, you can simply close the game and it will resume the next time you open it. Clicking the "Game" button will confirm it's saved, or warn that it couldn't be saved.
If you're running the game in a "Private Browsing" session, then the game will be lost if you close it.
If you clear the stored data of your brower while the game is closed, that will erase the saved game. But if you clear browser data while the game is open, and then either make a move or click the "Game" button in the game, that will re-save the game so it will resume next time you open it.
Please contact [email protected]
This game was conceived in 2012 as "Tigers Bears & Dragons" and first published in 2013 as "Island Champion". Its purpose is to be shorter and easier than chess but not becoming boring as quickly as checkers. The board has been reduced from 8x8 to 6x6 to make the game quicker with more action, and easier to see and play on small screens. Originally there was an element of chance with odds, but since version 2 (2025) all outcomes are from rules and player decisions.