A faction card game built on top of standard chess. The pieces and their movements stay exactly as they are. What changes is that every piece category is a card, and that card gets stronger as the game kills people.
Standard board, setup, movement, capture, check, checkmate, castling, en passant. Two additions, and nothing else:
The board shows the classic identity: this is a Bishop, it moves diagonally, everyone at the table knows what it does. The card holds the real one. Two players can face each other with the same 32 wooden pieces and be playing two different games, because a Bishop that harvests its own Pawns for XP and a Bishop that blesses them are the same shape on the same square.
The core box is built on one axis: mask against uniform. Hidden identity against declared identity. The theme sits in the matchup, not on the illustration.
Two in the core box, sitting either side of one axis. Full cards on the Factions tab.
XP come from death. The Court trades pieces it can recover for XP the opponent cannot. Every loss feeds something.
Two gameplans: feed the categories and outnumber through recursion, or feed the King, turn Death Toll on and win the long attrition.
XP come from position and from peace. The economy runs while the pieces stand and advance. They want the game short and the board theirs.
The matchup: the Undead profit from every death, their own included, so they want trades. The Order profits from ranks that hold and from ground taken together, so a trade that scatters its formation costs it income.
One turn, one thing. The action economy is the whole tension: spending a turn on a skill is a turn you did not spend on the board.
On your turn, do exactly one:
Passive skills are always on. They cost nothing and they are never activated.
You may answer check with a move or with an activation, as long as your King ends the turn out of check.
You are checkmated only if no move and no activation escapes check.
A placement can block a check or give check. A revived Pawn appearing in the right square is a legal answer to check, and that is deliberate.
Four rules protect chess itself. They are not tuning knobs, they are the reason the game still works:
No skill takes a piece off the board at a distance. Pieces die by capture.
Both corrupt check and stalemate logic.
Only in short, time-limited doses, never blanket.
Checkmate requires that nothing at all escapes, moves and activations alike.
Every capture pays out, and every payout is a fork: strengthen the category that did the killing, or feed the King. No splitting.
| Category | XP when captured | Level 2 at | Level 3 at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pawn | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Knight | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Bishop | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Rook | 5 | 4 | 8 |
| Queen | 9 | 5 | 10 |
| King | never captured | 6 | 12 |
Thresholds are totals, not increments. A full enemy army is 39 XP. Maxing all six cards costs 46. You cannot max everything: choose.
Thresholds are universal in v0.1. Per-faction thresholds are a tuning lever held in reserve.
The routing choice is the strategic fork of the whole design. Capture XP goes to the capturing category or to the King, whole. That single decision, made a dozen times a game, is what produces two distinct gameplans out of the same six cards.
A Pawn that reaches the last rank can also refuse the crown, and stay where it is as an anchor for skills.
A Pawn reaching the last rank chooses, immediately and permanently:
Standard chess promotion. The piece joins the new category at that card's current level. When captured, it gives the new category's XP.
It stays a Pawn on that square. It no longer moves, but it remains a legal anchor for skills. Gain 3 XP (Pawn card or King card).
Leveling never changes a piece's category. A promoted Pawn is a Queen, and answers to the Queen card at whatever level that card is currently on.
Several skills put pieces onto the board. When they do:
Every faction answers one question: where do your XP come from? The answer is that faction's whole worldview, and it is the only thing that changes between two armies of identical wooden pieces.
The Undead Court trades pieces it can recover for XP the opponent cannot. Every loss feeds something.
Feed the categories, level Rise and Court of the Dead, and outnumber the board through recursion.
Feed the King, turn Death Toll on, and win the long attrition. Every piece they take pays you.
Your captured pieces go to your Graveyard instead of leaving the game.
When one of your pieces is captured, gain 1 XP. Assign it to any card.
Enemy pieces adjacent to your King lose all skills, active and passive.
Place 1 Pawn from your Graveyard on an empty square adjacent to your Queen.
Up to 2 Pawns.
Up to 2 pieces of any category except King.
Skills that return your pieces from the Graveyard may place them on any empty square adjacent to one of your Rooks instead of their marked squares.
When one of your Rooks is captured, place 1 Pawn from your Graveyard on an empty square adjacent to the square where it died.
Broken Crypt places up to 2 Pawns. Enemy skills cannot target your pieces adjacent to your Rooks.
Send one of your Pawns adjacent to one of your Bishops to the Graveyard. Gain 2 XP.
Gain 3 XP.
Gain 4 XP. After you Harvest, you may place a Pawn from your Graveyard on the harvested square. If you do, the Harvested Pawn is Exiled instead of joining your Graveyard.
When one of your Knights captures, gain 1 bonus XP.
2 bonus XP.
Your Knights give 1 XP when captured.
Choose one of your Pawns. Place a Pawn from your Graveyard on the empty square directly behind it.
On any of the 3 empty squares behind it, straight or diagonal.
Any enemy piece that captures one of your Pawns is Blighted.
The Order earns XP by carrying the fight onto enemy ground, and by naming who dies next. Their economy runs on the charge and the sentence: nothing they own pays them for standing still.
Push pieces into the enemy half and let them fall there. Martyrdom pays for every death on the attack, and the Banner Guard pays simply for being deep.
Condemn enemy pieces with the Confessors and collect the bounty when they fall. Slower, colder, and it turns every capture into a windfall.
When one of your pieces is captured in the enemy half, gain 1 XP. Assign it to any card.
2 XP.
3 XP.
The mirror of the Lich King's Death Toll, and the opposite instinct: Death Toll pays for dying anywhere, Martyrdom only for dying forward. The card is worth nothing until you attack.
Choose one of your pieces in your Queen's line of sight, unobstructed: it cannot be captured until the start of your next turn.
Two pieces.
Two pieces, and they may be anywhere on the board, not only in her sight.
At the start of your turn, if at least one of your Rooks is in the enemy half, gain 1 XP.
1 XP per such Rook.
A Rook on the enemy's back two ranks counts double.
Name an enemy piece in one of your Bishops' line of sight, unobstructed. It is Condemned: when it is captured, gain 2 XP on top of its value.
3 XP on top.
4 XP on top, and you may Condemn a piece anywhere on the board.
The sentence rides the piece until it dies, and anyone's capture collects it. Never the King — he is not tried, he is checkmated.
Pieces captured by your Knights are Exiled. Gain 1 bonus XP.
2 bonus XP.
3 bonus XP.
Move up to 2 of your Pawns 1 square straight forward each. No captures, no double-steps.
Up to 3 Pawns.
A Pawn of yours captured in the enemy half pays 1 extra XP through Martyrdom.
Two passes, both from playtesting. v0.1 fixed the structure: the old identity was "position and peace", but peace is the opponent's decision, and four of six cards only did anything against the Undead. v0.2 fixed the fantasy: the structure worked — defensive actions fell from 94% to 64% in simulation — but the cards read like a drill manual. The rule that made v0.1 work is kept: every card is something the Order chooses to do, and nothing references another faction's mechanics. The verbs changed from holding to charging and judging.
| v0.1 · discipline | v0.2 · zeal |
|---|---|
| Muster — XP if half your army is defended | Martyrdom — XP when your pieces die in enemy ground |
| Benediction — bless a defended piece forward | Condemn — name an enemy piece; it pays a bounty when it falls |
| Hold the Line — XP if the Knight lands defended | Purge — the Inquisitors exile and get paid, from Level 1 |
| Shield Wall — pawns beside pawns count as defended | Fanatics — a Pawn martyr pays extra |
| the "defended" keyword | dropped — one less concept to track |
| Chaplains, Shield Bearers, The High King | Confessors, Zealots, The Crusader King |
The number in the corner is the XP the opponent gains for capturing a piece of that category. The two thresholds on each card are the totals that take it to Level 2 and Level 3.
Everything you need at the table that is not on a card.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Graveyard | A face-up pile of captured pieces, public information. Exists only if a faction skill creates it. |
| Blighted | This piece gives +2 XP when captured. Mark it with a token. |
| Exiled | Removed from the game. An exiled piece cannot return by any effect. Death triggers still fire. |
Each Active skill carries a 5×5 grid, oriented toward the opponent. Up is forward.
The Undead Court needs the Graveyard to be visible and reachable, so leave room beside the board for it. The Order needs nothing off-board except its cubes.
Move a piece, or activate one Active skill. Passives are always on.
On a capture: take XP equal to the captured piece's value. All of it to the capturing category, or all of it to the King.
Checkmate only if no move and no activation escapes check.
Team notes. Why the design is shaped this way, what has already been tried and cut, and what is still open.
| Work | What it does | What we take from it |
|---|---|---|
| Way of the Knight Betza | Pieces earn experience and upgrade into stronger piece types. | Individual piece upgrades, no faction layer. We went the other way. |
| Chess 2: The Sequel Sirlin | Six asymmetric armies, altered piece movement, a midline win and a bidding duel. | The warning. One army was near unbeatable and the bidding split the audience. Asymmetric chess forgives nothing on balance. |
| Knightmare Chess | Cards that change rules, drawn from a shuffled deck. | Chance-driven, not faction-driven. We have no randomness at all. |
| Onitama | Movement cards with 5×5 grids. | The grid notation convention, directly. |