Fairplay Magazine
No. 46 January - March 1999
L.U. Dikus
Germany

"Ausschachtungen" by L. U. Dikus

The title "Ausschachtungen" is a wordplay. "Ausschachtung" means digging, excavation, digging up. Since the German word for chess (Schach) appears in the middle of the word "Ausschachtungen" can be understood as the digging up of the traditional chess game, which is what Dikus writes about.

Chess with cards

After many years with only sporadic attempts, now a new era of chess card games seems to have started. Not in this country, however, as one would expect in the face of the general boom of new card games. No, overseas, to be exact: in the USA and in Australia people are busily expanding Caissa's kingdom with playing cards.

All games are alike in that they keep the hierarchy of the pieces and the objective of the game and only adapt the basic conditions to the new medium. None of the games go as far as to let completely go of a game board, in order to present themselves as a pure trick game. Ferdinand Bork thought he could proof this for the game of skat with many bold number mythological considerations in his Einf€hrung in die Schachgeschichte (Introduction to the history of chess), of which only 70 copies were published (Klanxb€ll 1951). Hans Sch‡ffl actually exercised this in 1880s with his game SCHACHETT, which was just recently described in spielbox 4/98.

Bill Jemase borrowed from collection card games for his EXPRESS CHESS. There are so far four different decks of cards of 50 cards each, in which the two colors differ in the frequency and distribution of the values. Cards with additional features provide some balance. For example, a card can force the uncovering of the opponent king, or another card allows that new cards can be played out face down. Of course, the cards are not tapped.

First, both players shuffle their card decks and lay out two rows of a total of ten cards, the front row face up, the back row face down. Each player takes two cards for their hands. Since there are no free rows an exciting exchange develops from the very beginning. Only spaces that become free because a card is moved away may be occupied again by one of the two hand cards.

Despite the virtual game board's small size of only four rows the pawns kept their ability to capture en passant. In addition, there is also a combination move that allows queen, rook and bishop to move immediately onto or over a space that a pawn just moved away from.

Twice per game the king has the option to free himself with a rochade when the opponent is about to capture him. In order to do that he switches positions with a rook regardless whether they are both standing in the same row, there are other pieces between them or whether the king or the rook have already moved. This is in every respect different from the rochade of orthodox chess.

CHESSMATE by Peter S. H. Tan also operates with partially covered cards. Here up to six players can play against each other, each with the standard set of chess pieces on cards in addition to two so-called wildcards. Unfortunately, the game instructions contain several points that are not very clear. One example is even simply contradictory to the rules, because the points of a knight who is marked in the accompanying diagram as standing right next to the attacked card are being counted for the attack.

The cards are brought into the game one after another and are placed orthogonally or diagonally next to a card that has already been played. The more participants, the more cards can be laid out face down. Cards that are face down may be exchanged during the game. It is not clear what happens to the exchanged card - whether one may add it to the hand or if it has to be placed under the stack. The fact that the cards are generally not played from the hand but are rather drawn from a stack becomes apparent only with the description of a concrete game situation. Since this is not mentioned one could assume that the stack, unlike with Caesar & Cleopatra (Kosmos), is sorted before the game.

For an attack of a opponent's card the participating cards have to be turned face up unless they already are. Is their total value more than the victim's point value, the victim (card) has to leave the game. With equal point values all cards stay. Again, one can only guess whether all of the attacking cards are captured, if the victim turns out to be the stronger party. Once per game, one can protect one's king by placing another card over him. This move is to replace the rochade that is not possible with this game.

In the basic game, the wild cards only serve to announce a pawn promotion. We are unfortunately not told where exactly the for that purpose mentioned 8th row is situated. In the so-called special game, the wild cards serve as jokers (can be played as any card). Due to the card illustrations and due to the lack of any restrictions in the rules of play, it should be possible to use the wild cards as two additional kings.

Mark Alan Osterhaus did not want to give up the game board for his Bosworth in order to allow for a better oversight. Therefore the game is packaged in a regular sized box without giving the impression that this is just to make it look more expensive. Box and cards are illustrated in a funny cartoon style, which also signals that one should not take the game too seriously.

The 2 - 4 players only have 6 x 6 spaces minus the corners available. Empty spaces in the baseline are used to bring more figures to the game in addition to the four starting "figures". Chance only plays a limited role, due to the fact that the players always have four cards in their hands to select from as long as the draw pile still holds cards. Therefore, the king's appearance can easily be delayed until the final phase of the game.

Furthermore, the regular movement and capture rules are followed. With more than two players, pawns may also move sideways and may capture diagonally in all four directions, except for moving back to their own baseline. Kings can even capture their own followers if there are in their way. A nice idea.

One also has to do without capture en passant, rochade and pawn promotion. Moreover, there is no check, rather an opponent king is simply captured. By the way, the last time this happened in traditional chess was in 1485 in England in the final game that marked the end of the so-called War of Roses.

When there are more than two players, all cards of the player whose king was captured are taken from the board. The successful capturer is rewarded - and that is another nice idea - with the queen of the captured, even if she was already captured earlier and therefore ended up on the discard pile.

The publisher uses typical Anglo-Saxon humor to characterize Bosworth as "The Game You Already Know How to Play". For their appearance at the Spiel '98 is Essen, the publisher even had the game instructions translated into German, except for one spot remarkably well.

On a flyer a whole list of positive remarks from English language game publications are quoted. A choir that one likes to join. In comparison with EXPRESS CHESS and CHESSMATE, Bosworth is clearly more dynamic and leaves room for tactical moves and even strategic considerations. Naturally, luck still plays a role and that adds just the right amount of spice to this enjoyable card game. On the other hand, the four hand cards provide an appropriate buffer, which allows each player to help determine their own luck. While these are all reasons to own Bosworth because of its game qualities, the other two games are only must-haves for collectors.

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