Iris Wars

This one's my 10 year old brother's. I was kind of shocked: As far as I could tell, he came up with it in about 10 minutes and it's honestly about as close to replicating the strategy and resource-management of some simpler RTSs.

Rules:

The goal is as simple as eliminating all of your opponent's pieces, excluding the titular Iris Beams.
Though it's played on a Chinese checkers board, it bears almost no resemblance to that game. Each player uses 3 of the six colors, in this case, either hot or cool colors, to signify their team's pieces and ranks.
You start with 4 light pieces, which deal 1 damage and have 1 "health", 3 medium pieces, with 2 damage and 2 health, and 4 heavy pieces, with 3 and 3. In addition, you start with one immobile "iris beam", which doesn't count as one of your pieces when it comes to determining a winner. The point of each arm of the star is a potential "iris beam", and when one of your pieces steps onto one of these points, they are converted from a game piece into a beam. Beams can only be destroyed by other beams, but may be replaced if another piece steps into the corner space. Regardless of the piece sacrificed in this way, the beam it creates is destroyed after a single hit. The 2 white circles in each of the four horizontal points of the board represent shields invulnerable to the attack of an iris beam external to that corner. If the beam corresponding to one of the two white circles fires through it, the shield is removed and the beam is vulnerable from that axis.
A turn consists of three moves. A move can be one piece moved one space, one piece attacking an adjacent piece once, or one attack from an iris beam. These actions can be repeated or rearranged however you want (ex. one piece can move 2 or 3 spaces, or attack 2 or 3 times, etc.). Beams can only fire along two axes, passing through one of the two white spaces on the diagram. A beam attack consists of either destroying the first piece in the row (starting from the beam itself) or dealing a single damage point to every piece in the row (including your own). A heavy piece is invulnerable to iris beams and acts as a shield, stopping the beam from affecting anything beyond it. When dealt damage, a piece is downgraded that many ranks, so if a heavy piece is dealt 1 damage, it is removed and replaced with a medium piece (and no longer has invulnerability to beam attacks).

Verdict: Interesting. Really fun, and intense. A lot of strategy is involved, especially concerning the decision to sacrifice one piece (and one more chance or winning) to gain a beam. Still needs a little polish, but since it's symmetrical, it can be played as-is.