Though sometimes it takes minutes to find a player, the match-making seems to work well. Games feel close and I’ll take every advantage I get. Defeating players who understand actual chess-you can tell because they castle-by following the armor-sapping Kunnin’ Gits with the Ork bishop’s ability to shoot twice is grimly satisfying. But while individually weak, combining abilities makes all the difference. I said earlier the special abilities initially seem underwhelming, and they are inefficient compared to just taking a pawn with a knight, bish-bash-bosh. Little-known fact: all queens shoot lightning.Īnd yet, playing online, I find myself using the tactics of Regicide to win matches with glee. There, hit points don’t apply and one piece simply takes another in the ordinary way, albeit while eviscerating it with a chainsword or detonating it with psychic lightning.

Each piece has hit points to be chipped away or reinforced by these abilities, but the initiative phase initially seems less decisive than the actual chess played in the movement phase.

A piece might gain a defensive shield, shoot at an enemy, use a psychic power, or throw a grenade. After each turn plays out like it would in normal chess you enter the initiative phase, spending points to activate special abilities. 'Regicide mode' keeps the rules of regular chess, even advanced stuff like castling and en passant captures, and sprinkles a light strategy game on top. Those animations are as brutal as you’d expect given the setting-watching pawns blast each other to ribbons of gore livens up boring moves, at least until you’ve seen them all.īut then there’s the other game.

‘Classic mode’ lets you play normal chess against the AI or other humans, and while it might not be the best chess game ever made, like Battle Chess the pieces animate into entertaining miniature duels that make up for otherwise basic features. The first is chess but with characters from Warhammer 40,000, like the themed sets you see in the windows of board game shops only instead of the Mad Hatter and Queen Of Hearts it has Space Marines and Orks.

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