Thủy Tinh Châu Chess társasjáték

Angol leírás

One word description is that this is a "chess" game. In that sense, gameplay is familiar; we move chess pieces in order to deliver a checkmate.

The setting is that for a very long time now, all East Asians have had their own chess variant. Chinese has Xiangqi; Korean has Janggi; Japanese has Shogi. What does Vietnam have or rather what did we have prior to 2023-2025? Not much; if it's chess, it’s Chinese chess/Xiangqi. So my friend Đào Hiểu Đông and his family created this game around Tết 2023. The motivation is very simple: Vietnamese (or rather some of us felt that we) needed a chess game we can feel proud of. For foreigners, this is a chess variant, perhaps an exciting one that breaks a lot of tradition in standard chess. Symmetry is one of them. In all chess games, there are for example, two rooks or two rook like pieces, two horses or two knight like piece. In TTCC, there is one such piece of each kind. Also note that there is only one pawn-like piece in this game.

Gameplay: The game is played a board that is similar to Chinese chess. More specifically, it is Chinese chess board with each intersection point clearly marked as either black or red. This is akin to a standard chess board with black and white squares. Here it is simply 2 different colors: black and red (and it is point/dot, not squares). Note that stalemate results in a loss. Thủy Tinh Châu is the piece we want to protect. This piece is equivalent to the King in standard chess and the General in Chinese chess. In terms of mythology, water represents life, and protecting TTC (Water Crystal) is the mission of the 12 Zodiac Animals. Other than Tiger, Chicken, and Monkey, all of the rest of the Zodiac has the exact same movement of some piece in standard Chess or in Chinese Chess.

For the actual list of all the pieces, please consult the full rules of the game.
Misc rules: There is no promotion. There is in fact a resurrection mechanic in the official rulebook. Unfortunately, I personally refuse to use it, and in reality, this mechanic is omitted from many tournaments Thủy Tinh Châu Chess has had so far.
There is a pass your turn mechanic. You can pass your turn instead of playing, 3 times per game.