6 player Ludo online and offline: how a six-house board works

A standard Ludo board takes four players at most. To play with five or six you need a six-house board: six arms around a hexagon centre instead of four arms around a square. The rules stay the same, but the track gets longer and the game gets much longer, with far more fighting.

Six-player sets exist but aren't common. Wikipedia's Ludo article calls the six-player variant available but uncommon. So most people meet it in an app.

What actually changes

Each arm of the board adds 13 track squares, so the numbers scale directly.

Every soldier has 82 squares to cover instead of 56, which is 46% further. The safe squares keep the same pattern as the classic board: from your start, a star comes 8 squares on, then the next start 5 after that, and so on round the board. There's more on that spacing in the safe squares guide.

Everything else is the Ludo you know: a 6 to leave base, an exact roll to get home, a capture by landing exactly on an enemy, and first squad with everyone home wins.

How much longer it really is

More than the board alone suggests. We simulated 2,500 games at each size with four pieces per player under classic rules, with every side playing sensibly.

So going from four players to six takes about three times as many rolls overall, and each player rolls about twice as often. Pieces also get sent home about four times as much. The track is only 1.5 times longer, so the extra length comes from the fighting: with six squads there is nearly always someone behind you.

How to keep it from dragging

Cut the pieces. Six players with four pieces each is a long evening. In our simulations, two pieces each brought a six-player game down from about 1,330 rolls to about 385, which is shorter than a standard four-player game with four pieces each.

Use the win-when-first rule for a shorter game. The game ends as soon as one piece gets home. It removes the long tail where the last few players are trying to bring home their last soldier.

Five players is different from six

With five players, one arm stays empty. That matters more than you'd think, because the gap gives everyone near it a bit of breathing room.

On a six-house board with five players, the squad right after the empty arm has no one behind it for one stretch of the track, so nothing comes out of a base directly behind it there. If you play regularly, change who sits where.

Also worth knowing: on a six-house board with five or six players, the turn comes round to you much more slowly, so plan further ahead. In a four-player game you make a move every four turns. In a six-player game a lot can change on the board in the time you wait.

Strategy with six squads

The four-player advice gets more extreme.

Safe squares are worth more. A piece in the open can be hit by up to five different colours on the way round to your next turn. If two colours have one chaser each within six squares, you are at 30.6% to be hit before your next turn. With four colours, 1 − (5/6)⁴ = 51.8%.

Don't sprint with one soldier. A lone runner on a six-house board crosses more enemy start squares, so it meets every colour's freshly deployed soldiers along the way. Move as a group where you can.

Count the arms. Before you leave a safe square, look at how many enemy soldiers are within 12 squares behind you. Twelve is the range that covers one direct roll or a 6 plus a second roll.

Remember the bonus turns. In a six-squad game there's nearly always a capture available to someone, and a capture gives that player another roll if extra turns are on. Treat any enemy soldier right behind you as a bigger threat than one roll suggests.

How to play 6 player Ludo online

In Ludo Fighters you can get six squads on one board online two ways.

Quick battle for 6. In Online squads, choose 6 players and how many soldiers each, from 1 to 6. The game matches you with other players, and if the board isn't full after about 15 seconds, Lumi AI fills the empty seats so nobody waits for long. Quick battle always plays by the Classic rules.

A private room. Create a room, set it to 6 players and send the 6-character code or the invite link to your friends. The host chooses how many soldiers each squad fields and the battlefield, and can leave empty seats for Lumi AI or wait for people to join. Private rooms can also run Landmines, Mine detector and Chaos cards.

Online squads can be played as a guest, with a callsign and no email. Jungle, Desert, Snowfield and Night Ops are the battlefields in online rooms. Ruins and Volcano are for offline matches.

Six players in Ludo Fighters

Ludo Fighters puts five or six squads on the six-house board automatically, on any of the six battlefields, and adds Purple and Orange to Red, Green, Yellow and Blue. You can run it three ways:

• Pass & play with up to six people on one phone.
• Custom match with any mix of people and Lumi AI.
• Online squads, in a private room with a 6-character code, or Quick battle for 6.

You pick 1 to 6 soldiers per squad, so a six-squad game can be anything from a quick scrap to an all-night war.

Common questions

Can you play 6 player Ludo online?

Yes. Ludo Fighters has Quick battle for 6 players and private rooms for up to 6. In Quick battle Lumi AI fills any empty seats after about 15 seconds.

Can 6 people play Ludo?

Yes, on a six-house board. A standard four-house board only takes four.

How does 5-player Ludo work?

On a six-house board with one arm left empty. Turn order and rules are the same.

How many squares are on a six-player Ludo board?

In Ludo Fighters the six-house board has 78 track squares, 13 per arm, and 12 safe squares. Other six-player boards can differ. For the other end of the scale, see Ludo rules for 2 players.

Is six-player Ludo longer?

Yes. In our simulations a six-player game took about three times as many total rolls as a four-player game.