A Paranormal Twist
Generals occasionally turn sides. Cadets may channel heroes from the grave. Apply cunning strategy but don't discount the unforeseen.
Chess is the perfect game of reason. Every piece is where you put it, every consequence is yours to see if you look far enough ahead. That perfection is the problem. Polterchess injects the game with uncertainty — not randomness in your moves, but in the standing of the dead.
The pieces you lose are not gone. They wait at the edge of the board, in order, and they can come back — into a square you did not choose, displacing a piece that may well be your own. The board you calculated three moves ago is not the board you will be handed.
A standard chess set labeled 1–8 and A–H on the side and bottom, starting at the white rook. A pair of six-sided dice: one showing 2 through 7, the other showing B through G.
Between them the dice can name only the 36 squares of the inner 6×6 grid. The border of the board is unreachable — and therefore safe.
Standard chess. When a player loses a piece, it is removed and placed in order on the left of the board.
A turn is a single decision — move, or pray. Instead of moving, a player with captured pieces may elect to roll the dice for a resurrection (but not while in check — that must be answered by a move).
The queue is a stack, and this matters more than it sounds: the piece that comes back is the piece you lost most recently.
The border of the board is safe. While chances of rolling a resurrection are low, it depends on the occupation of the middle 6×6 grid. A player with many power pieces in the center should avoid rolling, while the opponent might consider it an opportunity for divine intervention.
Pay attention to the captured queue. If you lost your queen, take a roll. She may replace an opposing pawn, or your own knight, but a good trade either way. Likewise, after taking an important piece, bury it by capturing a pawn as soon as possible.
If you are about to win, take a turn to put your king on the sidelines. When your king is lost to a pawn on a rare lucky roll, you lose with double disgrace, allowing the winner to gloat, "your king is my pawn!"
A conventional chess player counts material. A Polterchess player counts material and disposition — what is buried, what is on top, and how crowded the center has become. Trading down is no longer clean. Every capture you make loads the opponent's stack, and every capture you suffer loads your own.
The roll is optional, always. That is the whole tension of the game: you are never forced to gamble, and you will almost always want to.
A center full of your own power pieces is a center you dare not roll into. Sooner or later you will find yourself deliberately thinning your own position just to make the dice safe again.
Polterchess is played over board and wire by a small and superstitious community. Everyone is welcome, living or otherwise.
Our chat hall. Casual games, rules arguments, and a standing channel devoted entirely to bad beats.
Request an inviteA monthly ladder. Two ratings are kept: one for your play, and one for how the dice have treated you.
See standingsA weekly letter — one annotated game, one endgame study, and one genuinely unbelievable roll.
Polterchess is a demonstration publisher. The community links above are decorative, the ladder is imaginary, and no email is collected or sent.