Chess Rivals - Start Playing in 15 minutes - Concise Board Game Tutorial
Transcript
A tug of war battle, deck-build combos in this chess championship themed game in Chess Rivals. And today we're diving into a quick start tutorial of Chess Rivals. We'll explain everything you need to know if you want to get started quickly and pick up the details and icons as you go along in 15 minutes or less. And we'll link the project page in the description. And hey everyone, it's Stella. And Terrance, welcome to Maple University. And hey, if you enjoy this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comments. You know what to do. Now let's get to the classroom. Chess Rivals is not chess. It is a deck-building, card-battling, and neuro resource management game about chess. See the moves, gambits, and tactics of a chess match shrunk into a five-card battle which determines wins, losses, and draws.
Chess Rivals transports us to a fictionalized 1840, identical in its advancements to our world with one exception, the discovery of the graviton, a theorized quantum elemental particle which 21st century real-world scientists lack the understanding even to describe mathematically, let alone discover or detect. In Chess Rivals, scientists have found the answer in the game of kings. The elegance and computational complexity found on the chessboard happen also to offer an algorithmic solution to harnessing the graviton, but only when played at its highest level. And this is where you enter. You begin as a junior grandmaster, minimal fame, a starting Elo rating, and a starting deck of 10 cards, including the basic piece movements and a handful of tactics and strategies which you pick up in a card draft.
Society wins when chess as a whole is at its highest standard, so there are many paths to victory in Chess Rivals. You could win matches to become the greatest grandmaster. Balance your career to become a well-ranked but famous grandmaster who can encourage youngsters to the game. Or contribute to building society's chess infrastructure projects. Be the first to achieve your path's victory conditions to capture the gravitons and win. Chess Rivals has two modes, basic and deluxe, which are separate releases with separate boards. The basic rules play at two to four players. Deluxe likewise, but including an AI dummy at two.
Central to all modes is the card play of the chess match, which we'll explain first. A chess match is played one versus one. The other players are spectators. To set up, set the medium eval bridge above the board, centered, or moved towards the player with a higher elo rating by one notch per hundred elo. Begin the sliders with balanced eval, king, queen, and center board positions. You'll want to push these away from you during the match, especially eval, which you'll want to push past the eval bridge to win. Player pieces are a pawn and a knight and no starting pawn structure.
Players draw a starting hand of four and keep this bag of tactics tokens handy. The match plays in five turns. Each turn, each player simultaneously chooses then reveals one valid card. Green opening cards are valid only in the first two turns. Yellow middle game cards only in turns two, three, or four. And red end game cards in turns four or five. Some of the basic starter cards can be played in multiple different game phases. Then resolve each card from top to bottom and respecting the sequence of icons on the player board. King, queen, and center icons impact these sliders.
For each, move both the matching slider and the eval slider one step away from you. As a once-per-match bonus, as soon as you push the center slider into your step two, you can play a second card this turn. You can draw two cards. If your deck runs empty, shuffle your discard to form a new deck and continue drawing. Here, you can choose to take an attacking or defensive pawn structure. That choice feeds into the next action, tactics. Draw a token from your bag and push the eval slider that far. Plus one or two if you sacrifice your pawn or knight, respectively.
Plus one if you're in attacking pawn structure and minus one if your opponent is in defensive pawn structure. Return the token to your bag after resolving. You could sharpen or dull the match. Exchange the eval bridge for the next size smaller or the next size larger, changing how likely it is that the match will end in a draw. Or you can exchange pieces. Discard the opponent's knight or pawn and discard one of your own if you have one. Each card will also grant you resources, insight, gold, or fame. There are two other less common options for your turn.
You can prepare. Move a card from your hand to your prep area to save it for later. You may use a card from your prep area as if it were in your hand at any time. Or you can pawn a card, that is, take it to the local pawn brokers for resources. Choose any single card from hand, not just a pawn, remove it from the game forever, and gain the resources. Whatever you do, finish by drawing a new card to hand and moving to the next turn. After five turns, determine the result. If the queen slider is at least two on your side, then gain three eval. Otherwise, do nothing.
If eval now sits anywhere under the bridge, then the match is a draw. But if either player has pushed eval beyond their side of the bridge, then that player wins the match. The match can also end early. Resolve this checkmate icon while the king slider is at least two on your side to attempt to checkmate. If your opponent can discard their knight, then they avoid it. But if they can't, then the match ends immediately in a checkmate victory, regardless of eval. You could also play the force draw icon while the eval marker is under the bridge to attempt to force an early draw. Your opponent may discard their pawn to ignore the effect, but if they can't, then the match is over and it's a draw.
What happens next depends on which version you are playing. First, we'll talk about how to build your chess career in basic mode. Begin this mode with three fame and 2500 elo rating. The game sequence alternates between a single one versus one chess match and then a career building phase involving all players. Play out the matches as a round robin over multiple of of sequences. During a match, the spectating players also participate. They begin with four cards and unlike the contestants will not redraw during the round. Then they may act on turns three and five only by taking the pawn or prepare actions or by discarding a card to stake a one-point pawn or a two-point knight on the result of this match.
After each match, competitors gain the rewards based on the result and spectators gain resources based on the points worth of tokens they correctly staked on that result. If there was a winner counted here. Now play the career phase by worker placement. In clockwise turn order, each player will take two turns to choose and resolve an open knight or pawn action space until all of the tokens have been placed. In most cases, you'll be paying some sort of insight or gold cost to gain a reward, which could include gaining some other resource, gaining elo, gaining fame, improving tactics, meaning you can swap a bad tactics token from your bag for a good one, or buying new cards for your deck.
Choose them from the face-up markets. They're split into opening, middle game, and end game cards. Replenish immediately between choices. You may do a free refresh of a single market and up to two more total refreshes for one gold each. New cards go straight in your deck. You could also optimize your deck at the cafe. Here, you'll draw five to hand, remove any three from the game, and replace them from the market. While here, draw two and remove two from the game, thinning down your deck. Remember, prepared cards can always be treated as if they're in hand. With all tokens placed, rotate first player and go to the next match.
In the game's basic mode, the winner will be the first player to win three matches or to simultaneously reach at least 10 fame and 2600 elo. The game will also end after the nine matches without an instant winner, in which case the win goes to most match points, then highest elo, then highest fame. For the full Chess Rivals experience, play the deluxe mode. Bigger tournaments, more tactical career choices, and more ways to win. You'll use the new bigger board. Players begin with no fame, 2400 elo, and no projects built. The map begins empty but with certain locations added to this bag based on the player count and buildable projects set aside for now.
You'll now play a full round-robin tournament of matches between each career phase. Spectators no longer make predictions on matches and you'll have two sets of match pieces so that two matches can be played simultaneously. Mark match wins, losses, and draws in this table and determine the overall tourney placings and rewards based on total match points. Any tied players would share the higher placed position and the tourney winner or winners score a championship point. Now, set up the career phase. Set turn order based on fewest tourney wins, and then least gold, least insight, and a die roll if tied.
Randomly place locations on the lowest numbered spots and put the player meeples near location one. Each player will take four turns in this phase. On your turn, move any distance to an unoccupied location. Moving from the side to location one is free, but otherwise, you must pay all the travel costs you've moved. Then resolve the location's action. These are all similar to the ones we've already seen from the basic mode with an important exception, the town square. Here, your first option is to pay 15 gold to draw three of the leftover projects and choose one which you wish to build in the next numbered slot.
You gain a project point and all players have now gained a new location action they can use. After four turns each, players must pay the travel costs to return to location one. If they can't afford to, then they're late to the next tourney and they miss their first turn in their first match. Return all locations to the bag to be re-randomized next career phase. In deluxe mode, the winner is the first player to achieve three tourney wins or simultaneously hold at least 12 fame and 2600 Elo or to achieve three project points and at least one tourney win.
The actual chess may be a two-player game, but in deluxe chess rivals, two players will need to be joined by a third AI one. In a match against the AI, you'll draw a random opponent and play its five cards as follows. On turn one, the top card from the opening deck. On turn two, the opening or middle game card with the most icons matching this board state icon on the left. Break ties with the icon on the right. And if still tied, most total icons. On turn three, resolve the top middle game card. On turn four, pick the middle or end game market card with the most icons matching the right board state. Ties then broken by the left and then most total icons.
And on turn five, the top end game card. After the match, return the turns two and four cards to the market and discard the others. On an AI career turn, roll the D8 and move its marker to the matching numbered location, but only as a blocker. The AI does not build a career through actions. You will, however, count the AI's tawny wins. And like Kasparov in '97, you might end up losing to Deep Blue. Thanks for watching. And if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.