Tic Tac Toe meets chess in Tic Tac Chec, a short and simple strategy game that can be used to teach new players how chess pieces move, or to shake things up a bit for more seasoned players. I’ve been playing chess for years, but adjusting to new mechanics is always a bit of a learning curve, and our first round was actually kind of embarrassing – we were both so busy setting ourselves up in chess terms, we forgot the Tic Tac Toe part. But I’m getting ahead of myself… again.
Each player has four pieces: a pawn, a knight, a bishop, and a rook, all of which move the same as they do in chess, except the pawn switches directions when it reaches the end of the board. Tracking that is a little tricky, so I’d advise having the pawn on the side of its space closest to where it’s going next, instead of centered. We figured that one out the hard way, too.
The board is a 4×4 grid, and the goal is to align all four of your pieces vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The first step of this is having pieces on the board – on your turn, you may place any one of your pieces on any open space. Once you have three pieces on the board, you may begin to move and capture as you would in regular chess; captured pieces are returned to their players and “can immediately be played again on any open square.” It’s up for interpretation whether than means “they get to place it as soon as you hand it back to them” or just “there’s no cooldown before they can use a turn to put it back on the board,” so sort that out with your opponent before the game begins. It’s also up to you whether the “three pieces on the board before moving” rule applies to more than the beginning of the game. The rules on this one are pretty loosely defined, so there’s a lot of room to experiment and see which way is the most fun for you!
