This game is a 1 vs 1 board game based on Chess board and Pieces, and it is inspired by the game Train, so it is more like an experiential on-off game.
Initially GM will tell both players one side will be the terrorists and the other will be the soldiers and they are not allowed to tell their identity. However, the twist is both sides will receive the same identity card telling them they are the army of justice and their opponents are the terrorists.
Pawns now act as civilians. Players can choose where to place their civilians on their half of the board, but the civilians are uncontrollable. Players can choose to capture those random pieces as well. Both players will be told that the terrorist side has the ability to turn one of their civilians of their choice into their own piece that acts as a bomb, and can kill the opponent’s piece when they are on the vertical or horizontal surroundings.
However, the fact is since both sides are the army of justice as they think they were, there will actually be no terrorist at all, and all the civilians they are being motivated to murdered during the gameplay are innocents.
The gameplay are the following:
- Players can choose how to arrange their pawns/civilians on their half of the board.
- Players initially will only have one piece of their choice.
- Players can recruit a new piece every 3 rounds. For pieces besides queen, they can recruit both of the same piece if none of them are currently presented on the board. (If there’s none knights on the board, they can recruit 2 at the same time. If there’s one knight already on the board, they can only recruit the one left)
- All army pieces will spawn at the bottom line.
- Once a piece is captured, it can be recruited back again.
- Both sides can call out national mobilization once in the game, which will mobilize one of their civilians into other army pieces besides the queen.
- Players can give up playing at any point of the game where they won’t be able to win or they find the game not fun anymore.
There will be no winning objective, the player will need to make their opponents surrender/quit the game to win the game or they can also give up playing at any time once they feel tired of this game. The king is now removed, and the other pieces besides the pawn move in the same way as Chess.
In the original version, the winning objective is still capturing the opponent’s king, but the ways pieces maneuver are different from Chess, but it does not reflect the nature of the war that much, so I removed the winning condition and let the players themselves decide when to stop and quit playing.
Also, letting players decide how to place their civilians also reflects part of the war. They can choose to place their civilians in a rather safe area or use them as a human shield to block the opponents movement.
Playtestings
Human shield vs Protecting civilians setup
Identity Cards
