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You must move the tower matching the colour of the square your rival just landed on. Every move hands them their next one.
Each side has eight towers, one of every colour, and the board's sixty-four squares use those same eight colours. Get any tower to the far row and you win. Towers move forward only — straight or diagonally, any distance — and they never jump or capture. The rule that makes the game is this: you must move the tower whose colour matches the square your rival's tower just landed on, so choosing where to stop is really choosing which tower to hand them. The first move of a game is free. If the tower you are forced to move has nowhere to go, you pass, and your rival must then move the tower matching the square yours is standing on; if both of you are stuck in a row it is a deadlock and whoever passed first loses. Beat a rival and the next one searches deeper while your move clock gets shorter — run out of time and that match is lost. Your score is the number of rivals you beat.
Stop thinking about where your tower goes and start thinking about what colour you are landing on. The square you finish on is your rival's next order, and that single sentence is most of the strategy. Before committing, look at where their tower of that colour sits and ask what it can reach; if the answer is your home row, you have just lost.
The strongest weapon in the game is a tower that cannot move. If you can leave one of your towers blocked and then land on a square of its colour, your rival is fine — but the mirror is what matters: land on a colour whose rival tower is boxed in, and they must pass, which hands the choice straight back to you. Chains of two or three such forced passes are how good players win without ever seeming to attack.
Because moves are forward-only, your towers become steadily less useful as they advance, and a tower on the last-but-one row often has almost nothing to do. That means advancing everything is a slow way to lose: you run out of safe squares to land on and end up feeding your rival the one colour that hurts. Keep two or three towers home as a reserve of quiet, harmless colours you can always afford to give away.
When you have a free choice — the first move, or after a pass — do not take the biggest advance. Take the move that leaves your rival's forced tower with the fewest destinations, even if your own tower barely moves. Counting their replies is worth more than counting your own squares in almost every position, and it is also the habit that makes the deadlock rule work for you rather than against you.