A Chess card game?? That’s got to be worth taking a look at…
Designed by Portuguese newcomer David Melo, The Pawn’s Gambit is ‘chess with a twist of cards! Same classic objective: Win the game by checkmating all rivals or being the last player with a surviving king. Playable with up to 6 players for a chaotic, strategic showdown!’ Playing time is estimated at 40 minutes (according to the Gamefound page; 10–60 minutes according to the current draft of the rulebook).
The compact box contains 144 cards:
· 96 ‘piece’ cards, representing the pieces in Chess (rook, pawn, king, etc.) displaying a score value in the corner—these are the main ones you use during play;
· 18 ‘opening’ cards—asymmetric player personas, offering various powers (such as the ability to win ties or to make certain pieces invulnerable to ‘sacrifice’—see later) and boosts to specific pieces’ values.
· 30 ‘imbalance cards’—score adjustments for played piece cards of a particular type (e.g., making every played knight worth seven points instead of three).
There are also check and checkmate tokens, score sheets and player aids (oddly referred to as ‘cheat cards’).
How to Play
The first thing to say is that you don’t have to know Chess to play this game!
To begin, every player takes a complete set of pieces (eight pawn cards, two each of knights, bishops and rooks, and a king and queen).
On each round, players receive an imbalance card at random, which they place in front of them, face up. Next, they receive three opening cards, choosing one and discarding the others. The opening cards are all revealed simultaneously, thus each player can see everyone’s powers and piece boosts—which means everyone can see what other players are likely to be playing to achieve a high score.
A round consists of three turns. In each, players choose a piece card and place it face down in front of them; and they can play special actions from their opening cards once per turn, such as discarding their queen to replace their imbalance card (the ‘swindle’), discarding three pawns to swap a card from their hand with a played one from another person (the ‘sacrifice’), or swapping a king for another card at the cost of a rook (‘castling’).
At the end of everyone’s turn, a common imbalance card is revealed to all players, and everyone takes another turn.
At the end of the round, everyone reveals their played pieces, and scores are totted up by summing up the piece cards, taking into account any boosts and imbalance cards. The winning player/players (i.e., highest score) takes a check marker, or if they have one already, a checkmate marker—the game is over when the first person achieves checkmate.
The other players discard their played piece cards; if a player loses their king as a result of this, it’s game over for them.
The game continues with another round if neither of those conditions apply.
Wrap Up
I find the medieval-style artwork, by artist Justicia Satria, very appealing, and the game itself is fairly straightforward, with the added wrinkle of the special actions to mess with other people.
The Gamefound campaign is simple and straightforward: rewards are the boxed game or a print and play version, and that’s it – no unnecessary deluxified tat, no FOMO add-ons.
If you want to find out more, a rule book (in slightly idiosyncratic English—I hope it’s not the final version) is available via the project page.
About the Author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
