Chess is one of the original games of strategy. Two sides facing off against each other on a limited battlefield. Each piece has set abilities on how to move and how to capture enemy pieces. For some Chessis one of the, if not the only game, they play. There are those who see it as a purest game, and others who see it as a starting point.Realm Warfaretakes Chess as the starting point. The basics have been taken and expanded to include additional players and features, allowing for new strategies.
A friend and I sat down and play a game of Realm Warfare with the developer, Kerry Murdock, at Salt Lake Gaming Conthis year (2017). We played the base game and by knowing the basics of Chess we started quickly get started into a game after a brief description of some of he added rules.
There are a couple of new pieces. The new pieces and their moves were easy to learn. These pieces were added to the board to be able to provide a balanced layout to the board design.
There are ranged attacks and hit points. Pieces can attack from a distance along with capturing by a standard Chess move. The distance attack is an automatic hit. Then the defending piece makes a d6 roll to defend. Roll above your defense and you take no damage to the piece. Some pieces can take more than one hit from a range based attack and you mark the piece with a hit marker to show the piece is injured, and by how many points. Injury doesn't change the capabilities of the piece until it has sustained enough damage to take it out of the game. However, the piece can heal.
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| At Salt Lake Gaming Con |
After taking damage, that doesn't remove a piece, the player can opt to move the piece to one of the hunting locations on the board. Hunting allows the player to regain lost points for the piece on a successful d6 roll. This can allow a player to keep a piece in the game longer.
Each of the four colored kings have a special ability. This might be the way they deal damage or in the way they defend. This is means each player has a different personality with the army they choose to play. It also means you need to understand that your king's ability is different than your opponent's king and defend accordingly.
Realm Warfareinvolved taking the known of Chessand applying it to the unknown of the variants added. In playing only one game, I am sure I didn't get the full experience of what the game provides. This is partly because there are more options than a Chess player is used to, and, each color has a unique ability which makes the strategy for that color different. You need to take the abilities of the king into consideration.
Even with all this involving strategy, dice have been introduced. The use of a randomizer to determine if your piece takes damage can come into play in ways you might not be expecting. In our game, I moved my king out to use his ability, which was going well. I had strong defenses, which I was counting on. However, when I was attacked I rolled a one on the die and lost my king and removed me from the game.
For a person who enjoys only pure strategy games like Chess and Go, the addition of the dice isn't something they will appreciate. For those who are looking for something to expand the options of their game's strategy the addition of multiple players, range attacks, defense capabilities, and special powers, may be what you are looking for.
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| Getting ready to start a three player game |
Along with the base game Realm Warfare also has an expansion taking it to an eight-player game.
Realm Warfare (link to website) (link to Facebook) was developed by Kerry Murdock and self-distributed for 2–4 players, ages 12+. A game is expected to take about an hour. In our conversation it was noted the time frame is very dependent on the players, however, the variants usually lead to quicker games.
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