Dice Chess

[dvandom]

I'm sure something very much like this has been done before many times, but what the heck.

I was musing on how I do badly on strategy games like chess or Go, and prefer ones with an element of randomness to shake things up every turn, so that the future becomes fuzzier and the game has more of a tactical element. There's been plenty of "battle chess" games, of course, and in some ways every miniatures game is battle chess, but I had an idea for a really simple version that just needs five six-sided dice for each player.

Pieces:

Each piece has an attack and a defense, in addition to moving as in standard chess. They're listed as attack/defense.

Pawn: 1/1
Knight: 3/2
Rook: 2/3
Bishop: 3/3
Queen: 5/5
King: */*

Attacks on and by Kings follow special rules.

Attack:

When a piece moves onto a square occupied by an enemy piece, it rolls a number of dice equal to its Attack rating, and the piece being attacked rolls a number of dice equal to is Defense rating. Compare the highest numbers rolled: the piece with the lowest high number is destroyed. In the case of a tie, both pieces survive and remain in starting position. If the attacker wins, it now occupies the space where the battle happened.

King Attack:

When the King attacks a piece, roll one die only. On a 1 the result is a tie (neither piece destroyed), otherwise the defender is destroyed and the King moves onto its spot.

When the King is attacked, roll one die only. On a 1 the result is a tie (neither piece destroyed), otherwise the attacking player wins the game.

En Passant:

In the unlikely event of an en passant attack by a Pawn, it ignores any result other than the destruction of the defender. In other words, on a tie or loss, it still moves into the intended space and is not destroyed.


Well, all of this introduces the "fog of war" to chess, but of course I can't just stop there! Here's a few optional rules that sort of "fell out of" the main rules as fairly obvious extensions.

Shooting (optional):

A piece may attack without moving. The defender must be on a square that the attacker could move to normally. The attacker's Attack rating is halved (drop fractions). However, the attacker cannot be destroyed, only the defender, and the attacker does not move into the defender's space in the event of victory.

Support (optional):

For every piece the attacker has that threatens a target space other than the attacker, add 1 to the Attack rating. For every piece the defender has that threatens the target space, add 1 to the Defense rating. Support does not work in conjunction with shooting.

Suicide Run (optional):

The attacker is automatically destroyed. The defender rolls no dice, but instead takes their Defense rating as their "highest number", and the attacker rolls against that. Suicide run rules do not apply to attacks on the King, and the King may not make a suicide run. Neither support nor shooting work during a suicide run.

Comments

Re: See when you said "dice chess" I thought of this...

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I considered that angle, but decided it was a little more random than I was looking for. :)

I also thought of using the point value of each piece to determine its attack and defense (with the ones worth fractional pawns getting a one value rounded up and the other rounded down) but decided that made pawns TOO weak compared to other pieces.