Fun and semi-addictive, a nice chess twist with warhammer and always loved the idea of actually fighting in chess. Campaign for non-chess players is hard and frustrating however!

I can get past what really does seem to be bad math mechanics in the game….where I have two rounds with “enhanced pawns” 80% chance to hit and all six miss, yet the basic orcs have 52% and in their two turns all six hit…..this appears to be consistent. I can ignore how buggy the game is running on my junkie laptop. What truly bothers me to the point where I do not want to tell anyone to buy this game is what I feel is the total apathetic attempt to make the killing sequences.

Back in the day I played a bit of battle chess along with normal chess, and I have also truly enjoyed the Warhammer 40k world setting across all mediums, so the totally similar killing scenes for both races bothers me a lot. Ten minutes maybe even thirty with people who love the universe and a bit more time getting the action right really would have put this game over the top. The Background story for the campaign is good, the art is good enough for what I paid/expected, I did enjoy the map blocks and different setups to add challenge to the missions. The post mission rewards are okay, but hey it is a chess game a heart what do you want.

If this game is really cheap, you like chess and Warhammer it is an okay side game for when you do not want to play your really good games.

Probably the prettiest Unity game out there.

It is Chess, mixed with Warhammer. Similar in concept to the old battle chess series. With a bunch of gimmick modes as well.

If you like warhammer AND chess, it is a quite good acquisition. Especially for che

The concept is great, the killing animations are beautiful, blah-blah-blah... Let's just agree that "WH40k meets chess" game is doomed to be good... at least, at first sight. But if you play it long enough the RNG responsible for hitting accuracy really becomes fokking ANNOYING! I mean, I know that is just the idea, just like in Space Hulk, but whatta hell, is it ok that genetically engineered supersoldiers can't hit sheet from less than 10 yards?!! And in the meantime, dumb-fokk greenskins shoot like they're goddam prized marksmen.

The achievement system is just one big-uss disappointment. Complete hell knows how many secondary objectives and then prepare uranus to get ripped by the slowpoke servers in multiplayer. BTW, the objectives are also a disappontment. For instance, SM campaign, act 2, mission 8. Primary objective says "Reach the enemy's objective zone, or eliminate enemy's Meganob." Secondary says "Eliminate all Ork's units." So, I captured or killled all orks, leaving the Meganob all alone. Logically, to complete both objectives I had to eliminate him too, right? I captured him with my assault marine and you know what? The mission was complete, but the primary objective was failed. WTF??!!

And one more thing. I fokking hate unskippable logos in the beginning. I mean, I hate them so much that even though I've seen them for about fifty times now, I still can't remember what the title of that sorry-uss developer studio is. So, if that was your point, you've failed miserably.

Starting to write this review, I was going to recommend the game nonetheless. But now, having written all that stuff, I've actually changed my mind. NOT RECOMMENDED, at least until all those fails are removed.

Hmmmmmm That's pretty goood

I recommend this game at full or at sale price, because the core gameplay is well-thought-out and, the vast majority of the time, fun.

The game is also well-animated and attractive. Fixes for many bugs have been introduced, with the devs prioritising the bugs that make most sense to prioritise. They interact with the community and on the whole seem professional and somewhat amenable to receiving and acting on some amount of community feedback.

It succeeds in adding a new twist to chess. The battle system is fairly straightforward. The main feature that significantly affects gameplay is that it allows units which are close-up to deal high, reliable damage. In such an RNG-heavy game, high reliable damage up close generally results in more cautious, defensive play. Expect to see fewer flashy forks from Knights and fewer Devastating pins, because these will typically put your pieces at risk. Expect to see more small-scale ♥♥♥-for-tat exchanges, because these allow you to both swap a piece, dictate the opponent's next moves, and deliver an up-close assault, which gives your pieces a small edge.

In general, the most satisfying Chess moves are not viable, and the least satisfying moves are viable, and you can't plan far ahead in a tactical, precise manner - instead, you must focus on a more fluid general strategy. It is lucky that the 'game-feel' is spot on, making combat feel incredibly satisfying, and that the additional special moves add more than enough interest and nuance to make up for the lost tactical depth in the movement phase. Sapping potential threats of their strength before they can develop, suppressing units at key moments, lobbing Krak grenades, preserving Initiative points for use on a later turn, all these actions and more feel fun and impactful.

For these reasons, it is enjoyable for people who would consider themselves beginners, intermediates, or casual fans of chess (rule of thumb - if you can't remember a complete opening or haven't memorised the solutions to the most common endgame setups, you *probably* fall in this category). Slightly more advanced players might find the game frustrating in that it rewards a very different, less aggressive, more cautious playstyle. I currently fall in the former category, but in the past would have fallen in the latter, so I feel as though I can talk honestly about both. Actual advanced chess players may disagree on this point.

Where it falls flat is the single-player level design and attention to detail, especially with respect to secondary objectives. Many secondary objectives are poorly described; others in the past suffered from significant bugs that make them unachievable (these are fixed when found & reported to the devs); others are so RNG dependent as to be incredibly dull to seek and achieve. The AI is poor, making bad decisions from both a Chess and a Regicide point of view - often it will make moves that lose it the game, but ruin the chance of a secondary objective. Needless to say, this adds to the feeling of frustration when going after these objectives. Equally often, it will exchange a high-health piece with a Shield for a low-health equivalent piece that would die to a scratch from a Shoota Boy, or try to retreat a low-health piece that will die anyway at the cost of a full-health piece that will now be taken the next turn. It will spread fire between multiple units, when concentrated fire could score a kill. It will move pieces into positions from which they will clearly be taken for no apparent reason, seemingly being confused by the way Knights move - which is expected from a beginner player but not so much from an AI.

However, the single-player campaign is not really the point. And the secondary objectives are not really the point of the single-player campaign. So the weakness of the AI and the poor design of the secondary objectives are not significant detractors from what is, on the whole, an enjoyable game.

What may actually sway your decision is that the Orks Campaign comes in the form of an additional premium DLC (Only about £1, far from a deal-breaker for me considering I'm a Total War fanboy), and you need a third party account in order to play. I haven't found these to be obstructions, and so far the third party account works fine and hasn't got in the way at all.

If you are swayed by these factors, you're missing out on a strategy romp that weirdly enough feels similar to Advance Wars with RNG added in. It's a great game for hitting a sweet spot between the ultra-precise requirements of tactics-heavy games like Desktop Dungeons or, uh, Chess I guess, and the RNG-heavy strategy of games like Faster Than Light, XCOM, or Darkest Dungeon. It feels somewhere between a casual and a core game, and as such I've been really enjoying it.

Typically the game has been receiving scores of around 7/10 in the press, and although scores are usually a bit arbitrary this is genuinely a good representation of the game - an enjoyable experience with minor flaws that don't detract from a solid game with committed, though not fanatic, developers.

Rather nice chess with a twist.

really really BADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

I suck at chess, so I always get obliterated because of a dumb move I made.

But the way my marines get killed looks so stunningly beautiful, so I don't mind.

dont buy

This game is Boring

miss miss miss miss miss
miss miss miss miss miss
miss miss miss miss miss

You have to create account

miss miss miss miss miss WOOHOO i hit!!


Very unbalanced. It takes 3-5 turns as a Space Marine to kill a single Ork,
yet the Orks can wipe out a Marine in 2 turns.

I can't recommend this yet.