Check out Glinski's Hexagonal Chess, our featured variant for May, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Rushil Baweja. This game is a favorite of its inventor.

Ohm's Chess

Ohm's Chess is standard chess except that each non-pawn piece is also a Dota hero that has a special ability that players can use only once throughout the game. Examples of heroes and their abilities include - 

  1. Lich: Sacrifice one of his team's pawns.
  2. Nature's Prophet: Teleport to anywhere on the board.
  3. Pudge: Hook (pull) a piece to himself.
  4. Axe: Force the enemy to capture a piece.

In total, there are 12 heroes currently, each having a unique ability. For a brief description of all the heroes, refer to the Pieces section below. In order to avoid chaos, it is important to note that each ability can only be used once throughout the game, so use them wisely. Overall, I believe these small changes add a lot more depth and excitement to the standard game of chess we all love.

Also check out the short trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ1OOo6lr5w to get a high level idea of the game. You can find the installation instructions in the Notes section below.

I hope you all like it.

 

Setup

At the beginning of every game, 8 heroes from the current pool of 12, are randomly selected and assigned to chess pieces. The chess pieces along with their corresponding heroes are setup and mirrored similar to the standard chess. 

Sample setup - 

Corresponding hero assignments-

Pieces

All heroes and their abilities - 

  1. Anti-Mage: Teleport to a nearby square. 
  2. Axe: Force the enemy to capture a piece.
  3. Dragon Knight: Fly over pieces.
  4. Invoker: Mark a square where a deadly sun strike will land after a configurable number of moves, capturing any piece standing there.
  5. Lich: Sacrifice one of his team's pawns.
  6. Nature's Prophet: Teleport to anywhere on the board.
  7. Outworld Destroyer: Put a piece in an astral prison where it is invulnerable and disabled for a few turns.
  8. Pudge: Hook (pull) a piece to himself.
  9. Shadow Fiend: Fear neighbouring enemy pieces, causing them to move away from him.
  10. Sniper: Capture a piece without moving
  11. Undying: After getting captured, respawn if the square he was captured on becomes free.
  12. Vengeful Spirit: Swap positions with another piece. 

These are summarized descriptions. For specifics, refer to the descriptions in the game client.

Because of the nature of a few abilities, there are some restrictions on which heroes can be assigned to which pieces. These includues -

  1. Dragon Knight: Cannot be assigned to knights and king.
  2. Undying: Cannot be assigned to king.

Rules

Apart from the major difference that each piece has a special ability, there are a few other minor differences from the standard rules of chess -

  1. No checkmate. Capture the king to win.
  2. No stalemate. If a player has no valid move, their turn is skipped.
  3. There is no three-fold repetition or end-game drawing rules (yet), but players can always manually offer and agree to a draw.

Notes

Ohm's Chess is a custom game in Dota 2(free to play), so to get started

  1. Install Dota 2 via steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/570/Dota_2/
  2. In Dota, navigate to the "Arcade" tab from the top menu
  3. Search for "Ohm's Chess (Beta)" using the search bar on the right
  4. Install Ohm's Chess and start playing

You can also find more information about the game in the steam workshop page: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2966635250


This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.

By Rushil Baweja.

Last revised by Rushil Baweja.


Web page created: 2023-05-11. Web page last updated: 2023-06-16

Revisions of MSohmschess