XCHESS: XChess - Move, Play, Draw

Best if viewed in full screen for legibility. Commercial shows the basic mechanics of card and counter play. The rules and cards as shown in the video may be incomplete/slightly out of date. As advertised, the cards can be played with any chess set.

Product description here

Full game instructions here.
http://www.opensourcechess.net/2012/01/open-source-chess-cards-v10.html
Product Contents
There are two types of chess card decks, white and black. The commercial contains an instructional tutorial on how to play chess cards.
A starter deck has 20 playable chess cards, chess card instructions and 2 concept art prints.

Pricing
Our patented auto-assist customer classifier system will assist you in determining the proper price point and product for you.
Read these and self select into your classifier.

Download Chess Card Variants free to print.
tips pp to mccro8_gmail a.t.com

Chess Card Classifier

For People Who Think Chess is Boring
Go away and thanks for your time. If you are feeling generous, feel free to send this commercial to anyone who might think chess is interesting.

For people who think chess is interesting, but have a dusty civil war themed chess set they sometimes absent-mindedly fiddle with and/or are often near oak furniture.
Do not buy this game for yourself. It is not personal, but the game won't be fun and you won't get it. You probably have an office and a lot of more pressing matters. Reclassify self as "People Who Think Chess is Boring."

If you can think of someone who is into gaming and seems to have more free time on their hands and less direction than you and are looking for a gift to give them, any of the below product pricing options will do. I'd recommend "Lazy Man's Special."

If you don't know how you got here and cannot think of any people, then a word of advice; tighten up your search strings because

For people who think chess is interesting and have a dusty fantasy role playing themed pewter
chess set they sometimes absent-mindedly fiddle with

The only play we made to build any credibility with you was to make consciously technical and complex choices where much easier ones were available, like hand forging iron pieces for a banner when a nice store bought Staunton would have done just as well, or bothering to construct a mock theater view finder for a silent motion movie made on a computer. Its a weak play, so we are not expecting much. You are probably a very reasonable people and there is no reasoning with reasonable people. If you have significant objections reclassify self as "people who think chess is boring". Otherwise, pick any "lazy" or "post lazy man" package that suits you.

For people who are avid gamers of very mechanically complex games.

If you are bored and in the mood to try something new, you may like the game a lot depending on your tastes. I'd recommend any of the "post lazy men" options. You'll remember a chess set tucked away in a closet somewhere, the "lazy man" options are just the "post lazy man" + a ridiculous premium for paying us to drive to Wal-Mart to buy and mail a god damn chess board to the "lazy man" buyer. If you aren't willing or able to suppress your urge to dismiss the mechanics and rules out of hand rather than play them out, then consider reclassifying self as "people who think chess is boring."

For people who think chess is interesting, but too stiff/deterministic/ studious/ limiting/ static/.../slow paced to play.
You may know the basic moves, you learned when you were much younger. You never got into it because there was too much rote memorization, and hints of graduate level study and seams of madness at its highest levels that other games just as fun did not require. i.e. Mike Tyson's Punchout/Mortal Kombat/Call of Duty/etc.

If you do not have someone to play a board game with more than once or twice, but you play games online, just wait and see if this works and they make a video game. Reclassify self as "For People Who Think Chess is Boring," but leave your option open. Thank you and please come again sooner or later. If you think it might be a good game and are feeling generous, consider hitting the tip jar on the way out.

If you have a lot of time on your hands and people with whom you can spend time regularly playing a board game and also have fun playing table top games, take a flyer on any one of the following Product Packages depending on interest, circumstances and budget. If you ultimately reclassify as or are currently reclassifying self as "People Who Think Chess is Boring", thanks for stopping by anyway.

For people who actually did read chess books and started down the path of chess madness and mastery before turning back from its deterministic infinity.
I'd recommend one of the "post-lazy men" options and an effort to give it a try someday. If you don't think you can manage ever getting around to making the pointless effort, consider reclassifying as "For People who Think Chess is Boring".

For people who plunged straight ahead into madness

Email me a link to your blog.

For people curious about the claims to an anonymous art project
In the begining we thought we were going to try and sell this as a culture war themed art
set with real pieces. The picture above are some of the prototypes in construction. We created concept art and build stands for the pieces to play on a real board.

As we discussed what figures should go where on the pieces and fit within the context of our theme, we settled upon things like a banker for the white king and a bull dyke for the black queen, we stumbled across a quirk about the black pawns. We started with anarchists and reporters battling cops. Then I suggested we do some joke pawns art sets, like a kitty and puppy themed set of prints. People could by these and put them on the stands to change the way their chess set looked.
We talked about other potential themes. The fun began when we realized there was nothing that could not be 'black pwned' - meaning that no object or symbol could fail to work within the mythological ontology of the culture war chess set that pitted the establishment at war with the counter culture. What isn't up as a pawn in that game? Animals? - PETA. The Environment? - The Sierra Club, eco terrorists. Any image could make sense as a talisman of the counter culture.

So the idea was to create a joke cop and badass riot cop for white's two sides. For black, there was the rorshach pawn. That is the side intended to face the opponent so that the black pawns are not distracting to the player controlling white. On the other side was the 'Your Image Here' pawn image, which invited the player to put a picture of whatever they wanted there.
The questions posed are; "What would you put on their if you were playing black and therefore in control of the social forces fighting back against the status quo? Would you be ironic? Cute? Irrelevant? Leave them blank?" The idea is that over time people put images they liked on their chess pieces and by looking at a players black pawns, you could get a sense of their person, for better or worse.

For our interests, as people added images, they were extending our chess set, which was the art project, which meant they would be making art for us! We got really stupid geeking out on this idea until we figured out that what we really should do is try to sell the cards as a playable game and leave the art out of it except as a bit of glitter.

For people interested in the FREE game set concept art on the faces of the little chess pieces dancing across the stage in the stop motion commercial. These images make up a FREE chess set. You just have to hop over to that folder and print out the images. (We also went to the trouble of including a couple of them in every deck of cards we made up for sale if you are too lazy to print stuff.)

If you are also interested in participating in the art project as part of getting the FREE game set, print out the black pawn images. One Rorschach and one 'place image here' black pawn.
I'd recommend printing all game set images about 2.75 inches wide, which is about as big as you can get and still fit on a playable board.
Next, cut foam or cardboard the same dimensions as the printouts. Glue the printouts for the pieces on each side of the cardboard. Use something to laminate the piece for longevity, I recommend packing tape. Its about the perfect width.
Now you have to create the base. Cut foam circles no more than 1" in diameter, one for each pawn piece.
Get a paper staple and impale the base up into the underside of the piece. Dabbing glue on the staple's prongs is recommended before insertion into the piece.

Next, glue the round base to a wooden block whose widths are about 1.25"

Now paint the base black.

If you are interested in the art project, next, tape your custom black pawn images to the 'your symbol here' side.

You are done!

(I heard that you can buy stands that hold small images at any gaming hobby store. Using two sided art and sticking it on a base rather than going to the trouble of making a three dimensional statue is not a novel idea.)

Product Price Points
Lazy's Man Special - 1 white deck, 1 black deck, 20 (10 black+10 white) counters, 2 dice, chess board, and full chess piece set - $65 including shipping and handling.
One important qualification for the "lazy man special(s)", you do not currently have a chess board on hand. If you do, get the "Post Lazy Men", one white and one black deck will allow you to play with anyone.

An additional qualification for the full "lazy man": You should have modest discretionary income for cheap entertainment like gambling, gaming, internet or TV. If you have modest discretionary income, but not the kind of dough and/or interest to go retail video game price, consider the -

Lazy Man's Blue Light Special -
1 white deck, 1 black deck, handful of counters, 2 dice, chess board, and full chess piece set - $40 including shipping and handling.
Limited time offer - we only have 100 or so "Lazy man Lights" in stock.

If what discretionary income/ free time you have is on a tight budget and are still with me, the "Lazy Man's Blue Light Special" might be for you.

If you know a bit about chess, enough to at least think about the spatial relationships of the pieces on the board from a phrase like "queen side pawn", there is probably a better than average chance that this purchase would pay off for you.

The "lazy man light" is the low cost "lazy man", we are cutting out much of the premium of paying us for the pain in the ass of driving to Wal-Mart to get a cheap board for the "lazy man." If you are motivated enough to find/remember access to a board rather than paying us to do it then you may not even be a "lazy man"! You should try one of the "post lazy-men" options. We believe the "post lazy men" value offering is (almost) guaranteed or your money back good at these price points!

Post Lazy Men Options

Post Lazy Man Starter Deck - white or black. $15 including shipping/handling.
Post Lazy Men Starter Decks - white + black. $20 including shipping/handling.

The black deck tends to favor knight play and white favors bishops. Of course, no reason why one cannot play a white deck with white pieces, the colors are just an aesthetic choice. The singe starter decks are for the white or black "post lazy man" that is just getting in on the game. For the "post lazy man" who is starting the game, the best option is the "post lazy men" two starter deck package. Once you get a handle on the mechanics, you'll probably wish that there were some duplicates of some of the cards like Space Heater or Steal Wheels. If there are enough lazy and post lazy men out there willing to buy in, we'll come up with some booster packs to get those duplicates to you and throw in new cards for the trouble in booster packs. Until/if then, I'd recommend making do using the Bootleg option to make duplicates of a few favorite cards.

Bootleg Post Lazy Man Starter Deck(s)- cards available DOWNLOAD With a printer, scissors, glue and regular playing cards, the "bootleg post lazy man" can make his or her own deck for free in a few minutes. Dice, checkers or bottle caps can be used as counters. Tip money is optional and appreciated from the "bootleg post lazy man" if he or she can afford it, if not, no worries. Printer ink ain't free.

Payment
Place orders or tip via donations through paypal buttons on the right. Feel free to email your information if you want to make sure I am still alive. I am mccro8_@_gmail_dot_com.

XCHESS

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

XChess - Move, Play, Draw

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