Contour Magazine
Issue 3, November 1998
Stuart Dagger
Scotland

One of the obvious rules at Essen is that you should check out any stall that is doing good business and this one was. I was also intrigued to learn how an American company had come to do a game about the battle of Bosworth. They haven't. Want they have done is invent a fast moving and very entertaining multi-player game which uses chess pieces as its base. Casting round for a name for it, they decided that kings, queens, bishops and knights constituted a medieval sounding cast, asked an English friend for the name of a medieval battle and Bosworth was the one that came to mind.

Each player has a set of 16 cards which correspond to one of the sides in a game of chess. These are played on a board, where they will move and capture just like their chess equivalents (with a simple and logical extension for the pawns to enable them to cope with the fact that this is a 4-sided rather than a 2-sided game.) As the designer points out, this means that you have very little to learn, because there can't be many games players who don't already know how chess pieces move. The object, as in chess, is to capture the opposing kings.

The board has a 4 by 4 centre area, with four side extensions, each one square deep. So the whole is a 6 by 6 square with the four corner squares removed. The side extensions are the "field camps" and it is from these that each player's pieces enter the fray. At the start of the game you place four pawn cards in your field camp. The rest of your cards are shuffled and placed face down in a deck next to you, with the top four forming your initial hand. On you turn you move one of your pieces and whenever a gap appears in your field camp, you fill it with a card of your choice from your hand, drawing a replacement from your deck after doing so.

This is not a game that I could ever have invented, because I have seen lots of games over the years and know that multi-player games involving piece capture don't work. And they don't work, because what inevitably happens is that as soon as A and B get locked into an exchange of pieces, C and D will start rubbing their hands in glee, as they are gaining ground on both of them. This is obvious to everybody and so players play defensively, waiting for mistake, and everybody gets bored. However, all rules have exceptions, even mine, and Bosworth is one of them. Because the playing area is small and piece density high, defensive play is not an option. There isn't room to hide and there isn't room to stand aside while two of your opponents slug it out. The four sets of pieces are jumbled together, leaving you with no option but to attack.

The skill lies in recognizing threats while there is still time to do something about them and judging when to bring on the various pieces. The king will clearly make his entrance last, but it is a closer call with most of the others. Off the board they can't do any damage; on the board they are vulnerable. People who have played a fair amount of chess will have a slight advantage because they are likely to have a better "sight of the board", but that is all. The subtleties of chess are not there and so you don't need to fear someone who knows about them. This is not a rarefied and intellectual game; it is a straightforward street fight. Added to which, if you do come up against an experienced chess player, a bit of judicious ganging up will soon handicap him down to size.

The cards are very attractive, showing a silhouette of the appropriate chess piece superimposed by a very well drawn cartoon figure. They got a good professional cartoonist to do them and he has done an excellent job, his work adding to the pleasure of what is an interesting and fun game.

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