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 an empty square that is a maximum of 2 cd (chessboard distance) away.
2. Axe: Force the enemy to capture a piece.
3. Dragon Knight: Allows Dragon Knight to fly over objects. Dragon Knight cannot capture pieces in this form.
4. Invoker: Mark a square where a deadly sun strike will land after a configurable number of enemy moves (min: 1, max: 4), capturing any piece standing there.
5. Lich: Sacrifice any one of your pawns for the greater good. Lich can also optionally move to the sacrificed pawn's position.
6. Nature's Prophet: Allows Nature's Prophet to teleport to any empty square. Teleportation takes 1 ply (half-move) to complete.
7. Outworld Destroyer: Places a target unit within 2 cd (chessboard distance) into an astral prison. The imprisoned unit is invulnerable and disabled. The effect lasts for 7 half-moves on allies and 6 half-moves on enemies
8. Pudge: Launches a bloody hook toward a unit or location. The hook will snag the first unit it encounters, dragging the unit back to Pudge. The hook can only be launched horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
9. Shadow Fiend: Fear neighbouring enemy pieces, causing them to move away from him by one square if possible.
10. Sniper: Capture a piece according to normal capturing rules but without moving if the target is within 2 cd (chessboard distance).
11. Undying: After getting captured, respawn if the square he was captured on becomes free.
12. Vengeful Spirit: Instantaneously swaps positions with any piece within 2 cd (chessboard distance). Allied pawns can't be swapped forward if they will end up ≤ 1 square away from promotion.

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

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

Last revised by Rushil Baweja.