Pyramid: Pyramid Pick: Express Chess

Express Chess

Published by Blackbox LLC

Designed by Bill Jemas

$5.99 per deck, 4 styles
No board. No boundaries. No limits. That's the slogan used to promote Blackbox's Express Chess card game, and they're right on the money.
Combining the complexity of chess with the speed of card games was no easy task, and Bill Jemas has done it superlatively. The game is sold in 50 card decks for $5.99, and each deck contains enough cards for 2 people to play. There are 4 versions of the game available. The original version includes 2 different starters, both featuring Greek mythology for the white pieces, and medieval artwork for the red side. The other two decks are a Safari deck (utilizing photos of real African animals) and a Space deck (featuring photos and paintings of spacecraft from the current and future space program).
Play is simple. The deck is divided half white, half red. Sort out the cards and give one color to each player. Pull out your King. Shuffle the rest. Draw 11 cards. Players then take turns constructing the "board" from the cards -- 5 cards wide and 2 deep on each side. Cards in the back rank are face down, the ones in the front are face up.
Play proceeds much like real chess, with the cards serving as pieces on a much smaller "board." After each turn, if there is an open space on your side of the board, you may place another card as a replacement/reinforcement.
One of the factors that makes the game move so fast and so fun is the randomness . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.

Article publication date: May 29, 1998

Copyright © 1998 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.