Chess

Recently we have done a few more mainstream games so I thought we would go with something super niche for today’s game.

Game 13 of our “Fantastically Festive Christmas School Holidays 2023 Marathon” is “Chess”, a fairly obscure abstract strategy game played with Jack (.8.) and Toby(5).

The game is played on an 8×8 grid where each player gets an identical set of pieces.

Each player has:

8 pawns that move towards the opponent one square but can capture other pieces diagonally forward. It also has a weird rule where it can move forward twice on the first turn.
2 of…
Knights, a fairly weird piece that moves 2 in one direction and 1 in the other.
Rooks, a castle-looking piece that can go as many squares as you like in a straight line
Bishops can go as many spaces as you like diagonally
A Queen which can go as many spaces as you like in any direction you want… this piece if fairly overpowered and the…
A King. This piece can move 1 square in any direction and is the piece the other player is trying to take (think the queen bee in hive it was probably inspired by that).

Each player takes it in turns to move a piece one by one trying to take other layer pieces by landing on them on your turn and eventually trying to take the king (well you kind of like get in a situation where you can take the king but shout “check” and then the other player kinda has to give up. It’s a weird mechanic that kinda means the game ends with less of a “YES!” moment and more of an “ok…” moment.

On the face of it it is a pretty simple game but in reality, it’s really complex. As both players have exactly the same pieces and there are no dice or cards the whole game has zero luck. There is however no mitigation like in similar games for the player that goes first like there are in many games other games.

Because of the complexity, it can be easy to get into “analysis paralysis” so i’d recommend house ruling some sort of time limit between turns to keep it moving quickly.

You can also get into a but of a tedious situation at the end where you are moving pieces backwards and forwards. Equally, when one player gets ahead it is super difficult to come back from behind which means most games end with one player giving up.

For newcomers, the game’s intricate rules and numerous strategies can be overwhelming. Chess’s deterministic nature, while rewarding skill, diminishes unpredictability. In contrast to contemporary board games that incorporate elements of chance or randomness to introduce variability, Chess remains static in its approach, potentially leading to predictable outcomes among seasoned players.

I also think the game could be a bit more thematic but overall the component quality was good.

There is an expansion called “Knightmare Chess” produced by Steve Jackson Games that add extra rules and powers I will try and do a proper review of at some point.

We had some good fun playing this and it’s a decent abstract strategy game. The lack of thematic elements and anything to keep the game fresh on repeated playthroughs hurt it slightly but overall if you can manage to track down a copy it might be worth a try.

Disclaimer: A copy of “chess” was provided for free by my mother-in-law but our thoughts and opinions are our own.