Game Rules

1. Two Ways To Play

• New Classic Game uses the normal chess starting position and standard chess rules.
• New Game opens Custom Setup and starts the Maharajah variant from a custom army.

2. Standard Chess Rules Still Apply

Unless a rule below says otherwise, the game follows normal chess:

• turns alternate normally
• check, checkmate, stalemate, repetition, and time controls behave as in chess
• pieces capture and move according to their type

3. Compound Pieces In The Variant

The variant adds three compound pieces:

• Maharajah — moves as queen + knight
• Archbishop — moves as bishop + knight
• Chancellor — moves as rook + knight

These pieces can appear in custom armies and in variant promotions. To see every square they reach, open the live diagram on Learn Maharajah.

4. Variant Pawn Double-Step

In classic chess a pawn may advance two squares only from its home rank (rank 2 for White, rank 7 for Black), and only on its first move.

Because a custom army can place pawns on any rank, the variant relaxes where the two-square first move may start, not how often it happens:

• A variant side's pawn may make the two-square first move from whatever rank it starts on, not just rank 2 / 7.
• The pawn must not have moved yet, and both squares ahead must be empty.
• Each pawn still gets this double-step only once, on its own first move.
• A classic side keeps the ordinary rank-2 / rank-7 restriction.

5. Custom Army Rules

In Custom Setup:

• each side has a fixed 39-point non-king budget
• the king is mandatory and stays fixed — White king on e1, Black king on e8
• the rest of the army can be rebuilt freely within the budget

Every piece has a point cost:

• Pawn — 1
• Knight, Bishop — 3
• Rook — 5
• Archbishop — 6
• Chancellor — 8
• Queen — 9
• Maharajah — 13
• King — free (mandatory, on its fixed square)

39 is exactly the cost of the orthodox army (8 pawns + 2 knights + 2 bishops + 2 rooks + 1 queen), so the standard chess setup is itself a legal custom army. There is no limit on how many copies of a piece an army may contain, beyond the budget and the space available.

6. Placement Rules

Custom armies must be placed on the side's own half of the board — White on ranks 1–4, Black on ranks 5–8 — and from the home side outward:

• White fills ranks from the first rank upward
• Black fills ranks from the eighth rank downward
• a side cannot place pieces on a farther rank while an earlier rank still has empty squares

This keeps setups dense and prevents unrealistic forward-only deployments.

Space is the second constraint alongside the budget: a side's own half has 32 squares, one of which the king always occupies, so an army can never hold more than 31 pieces. Cheap armies run out of squares before they run out of points — 39 points of nothing but pawns cannot be placed at all.

7. Start Validation

A custom position cannot start unless:

• both sides use exactly 39 points
• the placement rules are satisfied
• the side to move is not already in check
• the side to move has at least one legal move

If the position is actually the orthodox standard setup, the app restores the standard rules profile automatically.

8. Classic vs Variant Is Decided Per Side

Castling and promotion are governed by each player's own starting setup, not by a single rule for the whole game. The material at the start decides it: a side that fields a compound piece (Maharajah, Archbishop, Chancellor) plays by variant rules; a side built from classic pieces alone plays by classic rules, however unusual its formation.

What "classic rules" grant a side, and what "variant rules" change:

• Castling is a classic-side privilege. A side may castle only if it started from the orthodox position (king and corner rook still on their home squares and unmoved). A variant side never castles. In a mixed game the classic side can still castle even though its opponent is playing the variant.
• Promotion follows the promoting side's rules. A classic side promotes only to Queen, Rook, Bishop, or Knight. A variant side may additionally promote to the compound pieces (Maharajah, Archbishop, Chancellor).
• Pawn double-step follows the moving side's rules (see section 4): a variant side may double-step from any starting rank, a classic side only from rank 2 / 7.

This status is decided once from the starting position and never changes mid-game.

9. Hidden Setup

Hidden setup is the core separate-device PvP feature. In the Local Network hidden setup flow:

• each player builds only their own side privately
• the opponent cannot see that setup while editing
• the full board is revealed only after both players lock their armies

10. Promotion Rules

Promotion choices follow the promoting side's rules (see section 8):

• A classic side promotes to Queen, Rook, Bishop, or Knight.
• A variant side may also promote into Maharajah, Archbishop, and Chancellor.

So in a mixed game the classic side is offered only the orthodox four while the variant side is offered the compound pieces too.

11. Online Play

Besides same-device games and Local Network, Maharajah can be played online over the internet against another player.

• The app connects to a Maharajah server that hosts lobbies and relays the match.
• One player creates a room and shares its join code; the other joins with that code.
• The server is authoritative: every move is validated on the server and the resulting position is the single source of truth. Both boards stay in sync, and a dropped connection recovers to the server's position on reconnect.
• All variant rules apply online exactly as they do offline: per-side classic/variant status, compound promotion, and the variant pawn double-step from any starting rank.
• The server version currently in use is shown on the About screen, next to the app and engine versions.

Clocks, Pauses, and Disconnects

In timed online matches the server clock is the only referee — connection state never decides a result, only time does.

• Timed matches run on a server-authoritative Fischer clock (base + increment). Flag falls are detected by the server; whoever runs out of time loses (it is a draw instead if the opponent has no mating material).
• Each player has one pause per game, up to 60 seconds. It freezes both clocks and shows a countdown on both screens; the pauser can resume early, and after 60 seconds the match resumes automatically.
• The same single pause doubles as a disconnect shield: if a player drops while their clock is running and their pause is unspent, the server pauses the match for them automatically. The pause lifts the moment they return (or after 60 seconds). One accidental drop per game is covered.
• Once the pause is spent, an absent player's clock simply keeps running — the opponent just waits, no decisions needed. If the clock reaches zero, the game ends on time.
• If time runs out before the flagged player has made their own first move, the game is aborted with no result — nobody “wins on time” against someone who never played.

12. Recommended Learning Path

1. Start with 1 Player standard games.
2. Learn what the compound pieces do.
3. Move into Custom Setup.
4. Use Local Network hidden setup for the full variant experience.
5. Play Online to face other players over the internet.