The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Knightmare Chess

OK, it's a good idea, and one that many people have had before. But very few have actually produced and marketed their idea, and none have done it with this level of slick and glossy production. But is that enough?

Anyone who's read a little fantasy has pondered the possibility of adding magic to the game of chess. With Steve Jackson's Knightmare Chess, you can do just that. The box comes with 80 cards, each detailing a spell that can change the normal rules of chess. The rules are dead simple - five cards in your hand at a time, only cast one spell per turn, then draw to replace. Some spells can be cast anytime (reactive spells and such), some have to be cast in your turn, and some replace your entire turn.

The spells themselves are really quite cool, and have some fantastic names and images to go with them. "Blessing" allows any piece to move like a bishop for one turn. "Fanatic" allows a pawn to move three squares forward in one move. "Merciless" lets your rook make two moves in a row. Many spells are similar, just applying to different pieces, and cleverly, no spells improve the power of your queen. Some spells affect the whole game, such as "Truce" which makes all capture forbidden until a check occurs. Some affect other spells, such as "Haunting Memories" which duplicates the effect of the last card played. Some of them are just too damn powerful, such as "Riposte" which is cast after an opponent takes your piece, reversing the outcome. Some are too weak to ever be much use, such as "Assassin", which allows you to take your own piece. And some are just silly - "Doomsayer" requires the next player to say the name of a piece out loud to lose said piece.

To balance out this variety of power and applicability, the spells also have a numeric value attached to them, supposedly relative to their power. This ranges from 3 to 10, but given the subjective worth of pieces and positions as a chess game progresses, and some of the more esoteric effects, there are a few discrepancies. Still, they're fairly well proportioned, and are an necessary evil to achieve game balance. At the beginning of the game, a player has a set amount of points to spend on his spells, and thus has to balance the more powerful with the less powerful. That's the theory anyway, but it doesn't quite work.

You see, the rules suggest each person has 100 points to spend. In the games I played, that gave each of us enough to cast a spell every turn, without ever caring about the cost. Trying to find a middle ground of frugality depends heavily on the length your chess games run to, and how spell-heavy you want the game to be. If you want to retain any sort of strategy, I suggest you keep the level low.

The other problem with this system is that regardless of how many points you possess, you might not have the right card in your hand. You almost always have to cast spells to keep up with your opponent, so if you keep drawing weaker spells, there's little chance of saving up for the big one. I've found a much better idea is to use the numbers to do some basic deck building. With around 80 points you can build a few tight decks of about 20 cards each. And instead of drawing a hand, characters can cast any spell from their deck each turn. This allows players much more opportunity for strategy, and really raises the stakes about when to play that certain card. Plus you can tailor the deck to your style of play. Like to advance fast and clear the decks with your pawns? Then build up a pawn-heavy deck. Prefer to jump your knights over enemy lines? Well, a few knight spells (plus some resurrection spells in case you lose them) are the way to go.

Of course, all these suggestions are based on the assumption that you want more tactics in the game. And this is where the whole problem with Knightmare Chess lies. The game is subtitled "Chaos on the chess-board", and they mean it. If you play the game as the rules suggest, chaos is very much the order of the day. Pieces under the right spell can move in any particular way they want, jumping, dodging, turning invisible, coming back to life, whatever. The spell "Figure Dance" makes all pieces on the corner squares move to the next corner clockwise, while the spell "Earthquake" rotates the board 90 degrees, thus completely altering the direction of play. Even if you knew what cards your opponent had in their hand, there is just no way to prepare for some of these cards. No strategies whatsoever are possible, because you simply cannot think ahead. There's no point setting up a nice knight fork if the pawn you're next to suddenly turns into a rook and kills you on its next move.

People who don't like chess will love this, because it turns the game into a massive free-for-all. Remember when you were a kid and you got bored and wanted your queen to have an uzi in her purse and blow the crap out of that smug creep's rook which just pinned you? Well, this is the game that caters to that destructive desire. Blow their pieces up, push them back, scare them off, turn them into pawns; or make your own be able to jump or charge or move sideways or shoot from a distance. And best of all, when they laugh mockingly at you and smugly remove your queen from the board, you can just smile and bring it back to life on your next go.

In fact, this is possibly the best fun to be had with this game. If you suck at chess (as I do), play it with someone who is quite good and knows it. Watch their face fall as all semblance of logic and tactics sails out the window. Most likely though, they'll get just too pissed off and quit before the end, because with these cards, the game is just no longer chess.

This is great for people like me who think chess is too serious, who just want to stuff around with cool little miniatures and have a laugh. In that regard, it's a pleasant little time waster. But for anyone who wants to add an extra dimension to chess, it fails miserably. It doesn't make the game more unpredictable, it makes it totally nonsensical.

Which such an outcome, it might have been better to give the game a bit more of a comic attitude, rather than taking itself so damn seriously. But the serious attitude gives the game its truly outstanding feature: a dark and violent ethos which runs through the whole design, particularly helped by the great artwork.

Chess is often touted as being dramatic, a re-creation of titanic, bloody battles, a mighty struggle to the death. But in reality, it is a rather sterile encounter of abstract pieces on an abstract board. Diplomacy feels more intense. But Knightmare Chess actually gives chess a feeling of drama. When you play "Dubbing" and turn a pawn into a knight, suddenly you start to think of that pawn as a real foot-soldier. When the "Bog" entraps one of your rooks, you get an image of your forces falling foul to rough terrain. When the "Holy War" begins and bishops and knights must change positions, there's a sense of some real politics behind the battle. And when the "Confabulation" combines two of your pieces into one (turning, say, a bishop and a rook into the equivalent of a queen), there's a sense of powerful magic going on.

All of this, as I said, is reinforced by the absolutely gorgeous artwork. The fabulous paintings capture this dark and bloody spirit of warfare perfectly. You think a bishop or a horsie sounds a bit wimpy? On these cards, the knights look like deadly armoured warriors, the bishops are black-hooded mystical druids, and the rooks are heavily-built executioner-types with wickedly huge axes. Best of all, the battles aren't just about taking a piece off the board anymore. Here, combat is bloody and painful and horrific; the ring of steel and the screams of agony are almost audible. Its almost worth buying the game for the artwork alone; the images would go along way to spicing up any chess game, or any wargame or RPG. Given the price, though, I would just hop over to the Steve Jackson games website and download the images from there.

In terms of sheer presentation then, this game is streets ahead of anything I've seen in years. The cards are big, glossy and durable, and they fit in your hand nicely. And they are very, very nice to look at. The dark, evocative design and the incredible artwork make them almost feel like real spells. It's a wonderful game to flick through and toy with, and be inspired by...

Unfortunately, it isn't really a wonderful game to play. The dark design only conflicts with the abstract nature of the game, and ends up being more humorous than dramatic. Even with careful and parsimonious deck design, it still gets way out of hand. For those who don't like chess, it is a mindless, anarchic bit of fun that ultimately doesn't hold your attention for too long. For those who do like chess, it is a mindless, anarchic annoyance that bears almost no resemblance to the original game. So although it was a great idea, and it might make for an interesting game or two, it's not something you'll be playing an awful lot.

But damn the cards are pretty!

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Knightmare Chess
Author: Pierre Clequin and Bruno Faidutti Category: Strategy Game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Page count: n/a ISBN: 1556343191 Playtest Review by Steve Darlington on 02/13/99. Genre tags: none	Knightmare Chess OK, it's a good idea, and one that many people have had before. But very few have actually produced and marketed their idea, and none have done it with this level of slick and glossy production. But is that enough? Anyone who's read a little fantasy has pondered the possibility of adding magic to the game of chess. With Steve Jackson's Knightmare Chess, you can do just that. The box comes with 80 cards, each detailing a spell that can change the normal rules of chess. The rules are dead simple - five cards in your hand at a time, only cast one spell per turn, then draw to replace. Some spells can be cast anytime (reactive spells and such), some have to be cast in your turn, and some replace your entire turn. The spells themselves are really quite cool, and have some fantastic names and images to go with them. "Blessing" allows any piece to move like a bishop for one turn. "Fanatic" allows a pawn to move three squares forward in one move. "Merciless" lets your rook make two moves in a row. Many spells are similar, just applying to different pieces, and cleverly, no spells improve the power of your queen. Some spells affect the whole game, such as "Truce" which makes all capture forbidden until a check occurs. Some affect other spells, such as "Haunting Memories" which duplicates the effect of the last card played. Some of them are just too damn powerful, such as "Riposte" which is cast after an opponent takes your piece, reversing the outcome. Some are too weak to ever be much use, such as "Assassin", which allows you to take your own piece. And some are just silly - "Doomsayer" requires the next player to say the name of a piece out loud to lose said piece. To balance out this variety of power and applicability, the spells also have a numeric value attached to them, supposedly relative to their power. This ranges from 3 to 10, but given the subjective worth of pieces and positions as a chess game progresses, and some of the more esoteric effects, there are a few discrepancies. Still, they're fairly well proportioned, and are an necessary evil to achieve game balance. At the beginning of the game, a player has a set amount of points to spend on his spells, and thus has to balance the more powerful with the less powerful. That's the theory anyway, but it doesn't quite work. You see, the rules suggest each person has 100 points to spend. In the games I played, that gave each of us enough to cast a spell every turn, without ever caring about the cost. Trying to find a middle ground of frugality depends heavily on the length your chess games run to, and how spell-heavy you want the game to be. If you want to retain any sort of strategy, I suggest you keep the level low. The other problem with this system is that regardless of how many points you possess, you might not have the right card in your hand. You almost always have to cast spells to keep up with your opponent, so if you keep drawing weaker spells, there's little chance of saving up for the big one. I've found a much better idea is to use the numbers to do some basic deck building. With around 80 points you can build a few tight decks of about 20 cards each. And instead of drawing a hand, characters can cast any spell from their deck each turn. This allows players much more opportunity for strategy, and really raises the stakes about when to play that certain card. Plus you can tailor the deck to your style of play. Like to advance fast and clear the decks with your pawns? Then build up a pawn-heavy deck. Prefer to jump your knights over enemy lines? Well, a few knight spells (plus some resurrection spells in case you lose them) are the way to go. Of course, all these suggestions are based on the assumption that you want more tactics in the game. And this is where the whole problem with Knightmare Chess lies. The game is subtitled "Chaos on the chess-board", and they mean it. If you play the game as the rules suggest, chaos is very much the order of the day. Pieces under the right spell can move in any particular way they want, jumping, dodging, turning invisible, coming back to life, whatever. The spell "Figure Dance" makes all pieces on the corner squares move to the next corner clockwise, while the spell "Earthquake" rotates the board 90 degrees, thus completely altering the direction of play. Even if you knew what cards your opponent had in their hand, there is just no way to prepare for some of these cards. No strategies whatsoever are possible, because you simply cannot think ahead. There's no point setting up a nice knight fork if the pawn you're next to suddenly turns into a rook and kills you on its next move. People who don't like chess will love this, because it turns the game into a massive free-for-all. Remember when you were a kid and you got bored and wanted your queen to have an uzi in her purse and blow the crap out of that smug creep's rook which just pinned you? Well, this is the game that caters to that destructive desire. Blow their pieces up, push them back, scare them off, turn them into pawns; or make your own be able to jump or charge or move sideways or shoot from a distance. And best of all, when they laugh mockingly at you and smugly remove your queen from the board, you can just smile and bring it back to life on your next go. In fact, this is possibly the best fun to be had with this game. If you suck at chess (as I do), play it with someone who is quite good and knows it. Watch their face fall as all semblance of logic and tactics sails out the window. Most likely though, they'll get just too pissed off and quit before the end, because with these cards, the game is just no longer chess. This is great for people like me who think chess is too serious, who just want to stuff around with cool little miniatures and have a laugh. In that regard, it's a pleasant little time waster. But for anyone who wants to add an extra dimension to chess, it fails miserably. It doesn't make the game more unpredictable, it makes it totally nonsensical. Which such an outcome, it might have been better to give the game a bit more of a comic attitude, rather than taking itself so damn seriously. But the serious attitude gives the game its truly outstanding feature: a dark and violent ethos which runs through the whole design, particularly helped by the great artwork. Chess is often touted as being dramatic, a re-creation of titanic, bloody battles, a mighty struggle to the death. But in reality, it is a rather sterile encounter of abstract pieces on an abstract board. Diplomacy feels more intense. But Knightmare Chess actually gives chess a feeling of drama. When you play "Dubbing" and turn a pawn into a knight, suddenly you start to think of that pawn as a real foot-soldier. When the "Bog" entraps one of your rooks, you get an image of your forces falling foul to rough terrain. When the "Holy War" begins and bishops and knights must change positions, there's a sense of some real politics behind the battle. And when the "Confabulation" combines two of your pieces into one (turning, say, a bishop and a rook into the equivalent of a queen), there's a sense of powerful magic going on. All of this, as I said, is reinforced by the absolutely gorgeous artwork. The fabulous paintings capture this dark and bloody spirit of warfare perfectly. You think a bishop or a horsie sounds a bit wimpy? On these cards, the knights look like deadly armoured warriors, the bishops are black-hooded mystical druids, and the rooks are heavily-built executioner-types with wickedly huge axes. Best of all, the battles aren't just about taking a piece off the board anymore. Here, combat is bloody and painful and horrific; the ring of steel and the screams of agony are almost audible. Its almost worth buying the game for the artwork alone; the images would go along way to spicing up any chess game, or any wargame or RPG. Given the price, though, I would just hop over to the Steve Jackson games website and download the images from there. In terms of sheer presentation then, this game is streets ahead of anything I've seen in years. The cards are big, glossy and durable, and they fit in your hand nicely. And they are very, very nice to look at. The dark, evocative design and the incredible artwork make them almost feel like real spells. It's a wonderful game to flick through and toy with, and be inspired by... Unfortunately, it isn't really a wonderful game to play. The dark design only conflicts with the abstract nature of the game, and ends up being more humorous than dramatic. Even with careful and parsimonious deck design, it still gets way out of hand. For those who don't like chess, it is a mindless, anarchic bit of fun that ultimately doesn't hold your attention for too long. For those who do like chess, it is a mindless, anarchic annoyance that bears almost no resemblance to the original game. So although it was a great idea, and it might make for an interesting game or two, it's not something you'll be playing an awful lot. But damn the cards are pretty! Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 3 (Average)