Professional Archimedes, published by some entity called “N.P.T. A/S”-- the inventor is not credited, and the box has no date

This offering from a Norwegian publisher belongs to the fairly new class of games like Amazons or Knight Chase in which players progressively destroy portions of the board, with the object of trapping the enemy pieces.  Professional Archimedes makes the innovation that a player may be able to reclaim a square at time of need.

Each player has one piece, a King.  The Kings start on the 8x8 board at squares f1 and c8 (above).  A move consists of moving the King to an adjacent vacant square in any direction (like a chess King), and then covering any vacant square with a colored marker (called a Pyramid in the Norwegian publication, represented at right by colored circles).  There are eight markers in each of five colors; when these are all placed a player in his turn is to remove one of his choice and place it on any unoccupied square.  The last player able to make a legal move wins.

The above rules describe the game of Archimedes (not to be confused with Scott Marley and Phillip Cohen’s Archimedes, which is completely unrelated to this game).  Professional Archimedes, described as a variant, allows an additional type of move:  when no other move is available, and when two adjacent squares in a line radiating from the king are covered with blocking pieces of the same color (like the two yellow pieces for the White King in the diagram at left), the player may remove the nearer of these two blocking pieces, place it or any other on any square on the board, and move his king into the vacated square, as in the diagram below. 

This new rule adds an element of planning as the king becomes cornered:  I could make a line of two to arrange for my escape, but will my opponent be able to prevent me from being on the proper square to use it when the final squeeze comes?  Should I spend time and blocks on making multiple exits, or attack instead?  I haven’t played this game yet, but I believe its opening theory will be unfathomable, with interesting situations coming up once the play begins to tighten up.  Perhaps someone could suggest a “house rule” that would shorten the preliminaries, like placing more than one blocker at first.