Your turn

What if you chose your own army?

Same board, same rules, same budget as a normal chess set — but you decide what to spend it on. Three queens? Nine knights? Or the Maharajah you just played, a single piece that is a queen and a knight at once.

The three pieces normal chess does not have

Each one is simply two ordinary pieces welded together — nothing new to learn, and each captures exactly the way it moves.

• Maharajah — queen + knight. Costs 13 of your 39 points.
• Chancellor — rook + knight. Costs 8.
• Archbishop — bishop + knight. Costs 6.

There is a mate in two for each of them — Maharajah, Chancellor, Archbishop — and in every one the mate vanishes the moment you take the knight half away.

A standard chess army costs exactly 39 points (8 pawns + 2 knights + 2 bishops + 2 rooks + 1 queen), which is why that is the budget. Spend it any way you like, place it on your own half of the board, and your opponent does the same — in secret. Nobody has an opening book for what happens next.

Read the full rules or download the game for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux.