Kamikaze Chess is a small, portable set of 64 tiles that can be used to play traditional chess, checkers or a custom variant of chess. 32 of the tiles become the black squares of the chessboard, with the gaps between tiles acting as the white squares. The other 32 tiles have chess pieces printed on one side and checkers printed on the other.
The namesake custom variant Kamikaze Chess introduces two changes, custom placement of pieces and action spaces:
After setting up the checkerboard, players shuffle their tiles keeping the chess symbol face down (showing the checkers side), then take turns placing their pieces on the white squares (gaps) until the board is full. Then players flip over all of the chess pieces to reveal the layout and play chess with the usual rules from that position. It is additionally suggested that one bishop on each side is moved to an adjacent black square at this point.
When players move a piece onto any black square, they flip over the tile and perform the action listed on that other side, which may be helpful or harmful. Players leave the space with the action side up and do not reactivate the actions.