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Lasker's checkers: a captured piece is not removed, it rides under the column that took it — and goes free the moment that column's top is taken.
Lasca is the checkers variant Emanuel Lasker published in 1911, and it changes exactly one rule, which changes everything. A captured piece is not taken off the board. It is slid underneath the column that captured it and carried around as a prisoner.
The board is the twenty-five dark squares of a seven by seven grid, eleven columns each. Men move one diagonal step forward and capture by jumping, exactly as in draughts, and capturing is compulsory, including continuing a multiple jump. But a jump only takes the top piece of the column it jumps: everything that was buried under that top piece stays on the square and is free again, under new ownership if the next piece down belongs to the other side.
So every tall column is a liability as well as an asset. A column of five that you built by capturing four enemy men is worth a single move to your opponent, because taking its top releases all four at once. Reaching the far row promotes the top piece to an officer, which moves and captures in all four diagonal directions.
You lose a game when you have no legal move at all. Beat a rival and the next one searches one ply deeper; from the fifth rival on you also begin a piece down, and one further down each time, so a winning run always ends. Your score is the number of rivals you beat.
Think of a column as a hostage, not as a trophy. The instinct from ordinary draughts is that capturing is always progress, but in Lasca every capture you make hands your opponent a target whose value is exactly the number of their men buried in it. Before you take a piece, ask what happens if that column is taken back next move, and if the answer is that four of their men come out at once, decline the trade and look for a different capture — which the compulsory rule may well be offering you elsewhere.
Because of that, shallow columns do the work and deep ones sit still. A two-high column carrying a single prisoner is a fine piece: mobile, cheap to lose, and it denies the enemy a man. A five-high column is a bomb you have to defend, and defending it usually means it stops advancing. Strong play distributes prisoners across several small columns rather than stacking them into one.
The compulsory capture rule is the sharpest weapon on the board, more so than in draughts, because your opponent's forced reply may be the exact jump that ruins their structure. Offer a cheap column where taking it drags their best column onto a square you can immediately jump. A chain of forced captures in Lasca can liberate half a dozen men in three moves, and the player who set it up usually wins on the spot.
Officers matter more here than kings do in draughts, because they can turn around and attack the tall columns that have been built up behind the front. Pushing one man through to promote is often worth more than winning a piece, and the back row rarely needs the full defence it needs in draughts, since a column that reaches your back row is usually carrying prisoners you would love to free.
Against the later rivals you start a piece down, and the correct adjustment is not to play more sharply but to play flatter. With fewer men you cannot afford tall columns at all, because every one of them is a single move away from giving the material back. Trade top pieces evenly, keep your columns at two, and let the compulsory rule do the work.