GameTime Magazine
Issue #1, August 7, 1998
Mike Greenholdt
USA

• Cost: $19.95
• Number of Players: Two to four
• Designed for: 8 to adult
• Game Length: 20 to 60 minutes
• Learning Curve: Very quick, if you have played chess; otherwise moderate
• Ease of Play: Very simple, especially if you have played chess
• Strife Factor: Almost none

Bosworth is the name of the field in which the final battle of the Wars of the Roses took place. What this has to do with a chess-variant game, I'm not sure. The creators did include a splendid one-sheet write-up of the event (the battle, not the game).

Bosworth the chess variant is an interesting strategy game. The board is a six-by-six grid with the corners blocked off, and up to four players may compete. Each player begins with four pawns in his or her starting field. The chess pieces are represented by cards, since players each keep a concealed hand of four cards during the course of the game. As spaces are emptied by movement or capture, the player places new chess pieces from his or her hand, then draws back up to four cards.

The object is to capture all the opposing kings. All the normal movement rules of chess apply, save that pawns may move toward any opponent's starting field and there is no castling or capturing en passant.

While Bosworth uses normal chess moves, the strategies are far from chess-like. Usually, players have far fewer pieces and fewer options on the board, especially in a four-person game. Keeping your king off the board as long as possible seems to be the best strategy.

The board is mounted on heavy-duty cardboard and is laminated. The card and board art is by John Kovalic, using characters from his Dork Tower comic strip as chessmen. There are silhouettes of the appropriate chess pieces behind the cartoon characters, so you don't have to remember who is what.

This is an amusing, if not compelling, game. Some gamers might be put off by the lack of randomness in "combat resolution." (That's why we abandoned chess for wargaming in the first place, isn't it?) A game of Bosworth gets serious quickly, if the player wants to survive, since you need a chess-game intensity to do well.

Gamers who gravitate to little or no luck games, such as Diplomacy, should like this game. At $19.95, this is a very affordable addition to a collection, and I would recommend it to serious gamers who want to tune their talents in board games.

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