{"id":839,"date":"2019-10-16T15:32:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T20:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/?p=839"},"modified":"2019-10-11T18:18:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T23:18:01","slug":"beyond-chess-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/16\/beyond-chess-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Chess Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beyond
Beyond Chess Components<\/figcaption><\/figure>A while back I wrote about how I encountered the game called Beyond Chess<\/em><\/a>. I don’t get the game out every month, but it is a regular fixture when I teach the Chess merit badge, and it has also been on a couple of trips. What fascinates me the most, I guess, is how little information there is about the game on the Internet. There is almost no discussion on Board Game Geek<\/a> and the original web site is defunct. Even the “wayback machine” (aka the Internet Archive) doesn’t have anything useful! There is nothing on Amazon, and as I write this there is one active listing on eBay (asking price: $39.95) and nothing in the 90 day sales history.<\/p>\n

Not too long ago I was in Denver and I stopped by one of my favorite stores: Black and Read<\/a>. What did I find? I found another copy of Beyond Chess<\/em>! But with a twist! <\/p>\n

As I wrote up in my earlier blog post (linked above) the first copy of the game I purchased was missing a pawn. After a bit of research I was able to determine the proper size to order for a replacement, and all is well. When I saw the second copy of the game at the store I felt compelled to open the game and verify the contents.<\/p>\n

Hm. The box was the same. The bag was the same. But the squares were … bigger? And instead of being black and white they were more of a cream and green, which is the color of a typical vinyl tournament chess set. The chess pieces were also definitely bigger.<\/p>\n

\"Beyond
Beyond Chess Size Comparison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Being in Denver, I was not able to directly compare to the set I already owned. I called my wife and she was able to send me some pictures of my current version. Yes, the squares of my first set were definitely smaller. And the king (remember the height of the king can be used to determine the classification of the chess set) was definitely taller in the set I was looking at. The game components were definitely different, but the box (and the UPC code on the back) were definitely the same!<\/p>\n

I bought it. And it rekindled my desire to learn more about the game. <\/p>\n


\nI started with the Internet Archive<\/a>. If you have never used that web resource, you can go back and see what various web sites looked like at different points in time. It can be quite interesting! Anyway, since the game was released in 2006 I thought I could go back and review the web site \/ domain as it appeared at that time. When I entered the domain, I was informed that the site had been captured 17 times between March 8, 2008 and September 7, 2019. I went right to the early version. Here’s what I saw.<\/p>\n

\"Internet
Internet Archive of GoBeyondChess<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not much happening there. The Beyond Chess links were not valid with in the archive. But when I clicked on the archive link for standard chess here’s what I read. I have copied the entire text here to preserve it.<\/p>\n

A brief History of Chess…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although, historians cannot agree, it is believed that chess originated in India around 600 A.D., perhaps even earlier. The game spread from Persia to neighboring countries after Arab invaders conquered Persia in the 640’s. Chess was brought to Spain by Muslim invaders in the early 700’s. By 1000, the game had likely spread through Europe. Around the 1500’s, chess began to take on it’s modern look as the moves of the game took on their present form.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to the present – modern warfare has evolved. Armies no longer form columns and lines to march toward each other on small battlefields for combat, as traditional chess emulates.<\/p>\n

Today’s battles are fought over vast expanses with ever-changing terrain. Strategy must now take into account, not only how the armies move, but also the effects the battlefield has on them.<\/p>\n

So, too, chess has taken a leap forward. Beyond Chess adds a whole new level of strategy to the game, where not only must you worry about the armies, but also the board on which they fight. Players move a piece, then a square. As the game presses on, the terrain on which it’s played reshapes itself over and over. Paths to victory one moment become traps of defeat the next.<\/p>\n

Once you’ve played Beyond Chess, you’ll wonder why it hasn’t been played this way all along.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

None of the rest of the links on the archived page worked. The text above was interesting, but reads more like marketing material. It was more than I had before, so I pressed on!<\/p>\n

Next I tried finding out more about the company name. Beyond Chess is published by Ialy Games<\/strong> so I searched for that phrase. The most intriguing site I found provides values for unusual attic \/ estate \/ garage sale finds and is called Worth Point.<\/p>\n

Dave Crockett, creator of Beyond Chess, takes the games principles to a whole new level by applying them to an ever changing environment while making sure to preserve the essence of traditional chess. Crockett always loved games, inventing his first game at the age of 9. Dave Crockett’s father opened up a whole new world of game play when he taught his 12 year-old son how to play chess. From there he became an avid chess player and a proud member of the U.S. Chess Federation. As a U.S. Marine, he created the concept of a movable board to more closely reflect modern warfare and take chess to a whole new level never before seen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Source: Ialy Games page at Worthpoint.com<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s a lot more information than I had before! Now I have a designer name which—interestingly enough—does not appear on the box or within the game manual<\/a> anywhere.<\/p>\n


\nA short Internet search later and I found this page: <\/p>\n

www.boardgames.com\/designer\/david-crockett<\/a><\/p>\n

On that page is shows (yes!) Beyond Chess as one of five games designed by the same person. The other games credited include StarRunners<\/em>, WreckTangle<\/em>, Lieber Nachbar<\/em>, and Reach<\/em>. And of course Beyond Chess, described on this site as follows:<\/p>\n

Beyond Chess is a chess variant that uses a modular gameboard that actually shifts during play. Rather than playing on an 8\u00d78 grid, the game is played on 64 movable squares.<\/p>\n

Players can move pieces as well as game squares, causing an ever changing landscape of movement possibilities. Furthermore, it is possible to entirely isolate an opponent’s playing piece, thus rendering it immobile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now here’s the weird part. When I went back to the page today, none of those other four games were listed. \ud83d\ude15 Instead of five games there is only one. What’s going on?<\/p>\n

My favorite board game resource (Board Game Geek) has a page for David Crockett but it’s empty. Ditto for Wikipedia. Board Game Geek (often abbreviated to BGG) lists both StarRunners<\/em> and WreckTangle<\/em> as entries for the Ice Game Design competition<\/a> but they are credited to different designers! I guess maybe someone at BoardGames.com was told their page is inaccurate, and as of today it only shows Beyond Chess.<\/p>\n

The rabbit hole continues. At this point I have exhausted my Internet search skills. I have posted questions on Board Game Geek and on Facebook. Maybe I’m the only one interested at this point. \ud83d\ude42 It just seems weird that with so much information available to us today, nuggets of data about this particular game seem to be particularly sparse.<\/p>\n

If you have anything else that I haven’t found yet, please let me know in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back I wrote about how I encountered the game called Beyond Chess. I don’t get the game out every month, but it is a regular fixture when I teach the Chess merit badge, and it has also been on a couple of trips. What fascinates me the most, I guess, is how little … Continue reading “Beyond Chess Revisited”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}