Capture

When it comes to catpure, Pai Sho is quite simple. The mechanism itself is common from other games: If a tile moves to an intersection already occupied by an opponent's tile, that tile is captured and removed from the Pai Sho game. However, there are two special kinds of capture that need extra rules. I will explain those below, but first about the normal case:

Normal Capture

The first player's tiles (which are colored in black): He has one of each flower scattered across the board. His opponent, the white player, has only Roses and Jasmines.
You are already a bit familiar with how the tiles move, so it should be no big problem for you to find out which tiles can be captured. For example, the black Jade at the bottom could capture both Jasmines next to it.
Now a question: Can you find all white tiles that can be captured by black? If you have problems with how the tiles move, refer to the previous chapter's overview. How many can not be captured?



Solution:

Three white tiles cannot be captured.

Kamikaze Capture
The second kind used in Pai sho is Kamikaze Capture. Previously, we have separated Red flowers (Rose, Chrys., Rhod.) from White ones (Jasmine, Lily, Jade). This has a reason which is about where the tiles can move to. You know the movement styles, but what is also important is the concept of natural/unnatural gardens:
For a Red flower, both red gardens in the board center are "natural", while both white gardens are "unnatural". For White flowers it's vice-versa.
If a flower tile ends its movement on an entirely unnatural intersection, it is captured.
What does that mean? For example, if a Rose (a Red flower) were to move to an intersection in a white garden, it would be captured, because the white garden is unnatural for the Rose. On the other hand, a Jasmine would be captured were it to land on an entirely red intersection .

So, why should anyone ever move into an unnatural garden? Well, you can't do it in the first place, because capturing your own tiles is not allowed. And this is where Kamikaze Capture comes in: It is an exception from that rule, meaning that when doing a Kamikaze Capture, you are allowed to move into an unnatural garden and discard your own tile. An example may clarify that:

Imagine you are the black player. You cannot move into the white garden, and your opponent can't come over into the red garden. However, you can make a Kamikaze Capture and take one of the opponent's tiles (with the side effect that your tile gets removed as well). So in fact, all three white tiles can be captured by the respective black tiles due to Kamikaze capture.


Bending Capture
The third kind of capture is Bending Capture. As mentioned before, the Wheel and Boat tiles have the ability to move other tiles by bending them. For example, look at this image:

Remember that the Boat tile can push other tiles along it's way. So, what do you think happens if I push the Rose into the white garden above? Well, it ends up in an unnatural garden and is captured, right? That's what you call a Bending Capture:
If bending moves a flower tile(s) into an unnatural garden, that flower is "captured by Bending Capture".

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