I played chess competitively from the age of 6 to 14. Buried in chess notation, my young mind frequently fantasized how much more fun chess would be if it had actually been designed with fun in mind. I envisioned powerful units, dazzling abilities and narrative campaigns. The chance of a heroic intervention or a twist of fate to turn the tide of the battle. Then I discovered Warhammer, with all these gameplay elements and more. Needless to say, it blows chess out of the water.

In chess, although variation may exist between players based on their opening preferences, playstyle, or relative strengths in tactics, positional play, the opening or the endgame, ultimately everyone uses the same army. In warhammer, there’s incredible diversity based on army choice and composition, giving each player and army a niche in the community.

Two ‘chess style’ warhammer armies face off against each other. In the Tyrant’s Gambit Declined opening, the Adeptus Mechanicus player refuses the proffered Termagants and instead seizes the open firing lane with their Kataphron Breacher, preventing the Tyranids from castling.

If only the 7th century inventors of chess could see us now! The only thing cooler about chess is the ultra badass queen, which when combined with the ability of pawns to promote into queens, leads to nail biting endgames. Still, it took until the late 15th century, when Queen Isabella of Spain was at the height of her powers, for the chess queen to gain her modern abilities.

Having played both games, numerous ideas from chess map to the warhammer experience and directly influence my playstyle and perception of the game:

I strive to measure everything

In chess, there are only 64 places your units can be, so there's no need for measuring, checking angles or declaring intent. In Warhammer, on the other hand, distances are measured relative to enemy units and to objectives. The distance from one unit to another can be critical to the outcome of the game, yet remains unknown until measured. To regain the precision of chess, a chess player measures obsessively to figure out if they can be charged or shot, if they can touch an objective, or if they are screening out a rapid ingress. You’ll often see us placing artificial lines to denote line of sight or radii to see charge distances or rapid ingress distances.

I don’t understand the damage phase

Warhammer features resilient deathstars that survive anything or hammer units that kill anything they touch. In chess on the other hand, every piece, no matter how powerful, kills or dies in one hit. As a chess player, I have a hard time appreciating tankiness or destructiveness and my eyes glaze over whenever someone describes how much damage a unit can deal or receive.

I don’t understand ‘medium range’

In chess, bishops, rooks and queens have an infinite, board spanning range. Kings, pawns and knights have a defined ‘short range’. 12 and 24 inch range is the weirdest range for a chess player because it falls into a ‘medium range’ zone in which there is no analog. I’ll also often incorrectly treat any unit with 24” range as effectively infinite. As a result, we’ll be weak in situations where distinctions between medium and long range are tactically significant.

I value mobility and countermobility

In chess, what sets pieces apart is how they move, and so chess players are naturally drawn to the movement phase. They also highly value the reactive moves which allow units to evade and survive or otherwise stymie an opponent's plan, because the move and counter move cadence is similar to turn taking in chess.

As a result, I tend to have expendable, high mobility units in my army to threaten objectives and block an opponent’s moves (think pawns on steroids).

I treasure my units, even the little ones.

Unlike chess, which lasts until checkmate, a game of warhammer is limited to 5 battle rounds. This means that in warhammer you can be losing slightly but not lose (saved by the bell), whereas in chess being down by a single pawn could translate to inevitable defeat in the endgame. I treasure my pawns as much as my larger pieces and only spend them with clear intent.

I support perfect play from my opponent.

Chess players win by outplaying the opponent. Rather than trying to gotcha an opponent or catch them in a blunder, I anticipate their best possible move and instead endeavor to set up ‘no win’ situations for them. Gotchas and take backs do not exist in chess - however in Warhammer I allow take backs so I can play my opponent at their best. I also think about limiting an opponent’s capabilities as much as I think about expanding my own. Abilities like lone operative or 12” no deep strike zones are highly valued because they reduce an opponent’s options.

I value skill over luck

We’ve all had a game of Warhammer swing on a lucky overwatch, a tactical secondary, or a failed 4” charge, stealing you a win over a better player. Randomness in Warhammer may also lead to snowballing, e.g. your titan surviving on one wound could lead to an entire extra round of shooting which wins you the game. Yet, surprisingly, randomness plays only a small part in the outcome of matches, and usually only among players of relatively equal skill.

One way to think about skill expression in a game is to map out how many ranks of competence exist, where each additional rank means a 90% chance of beating the previous rank (roughly 350 elo difference):

You can see there is a limit to how good you can get at Yahtzee. However, sufficient skill expression exists in Warhammer that most players can improve their skill to the point where they can consistently beat their former selves. Skilled players also have ways to reduce unnecessary randomness at list selection and during gameplay, while selecting armies that reward skill. Thus, only at a relatively high level of skill (e.g. the World Championships), where players no longer make game defining errors, does luck play a larger role than skill in the outcome.

In post game analysis, I rarely dwell upon luck but instead emphasize how both the winning and the losing side might have played better. At our level, games are not won or lost on luck.

I value training and documentation

As a chess player I had to train hard and intentionally to gain a slight improvement in performance. I know that focused training can and will let you dominate your opponents - but I don't expect results to come easy. The amount of training and prep time needed to improve from competent Warhammer player to winning a GT is likely similar to the chess training required to rise from 1450 to 1800, (3-5 years of hard work!)

Warhammer is exciting because the theoretical limits of player ability are still unexplored. Unlike chess, where computers have long exceeded the skill of the best human players, each Warhammer tournament delivers fresh innovation and insight. There is a shallower pool of talent and knowledge relative to chess. For example, most ‘guides’ available for Warhammer do little more than explain what the various units do, a vast discrepancy relative to chess where you can find entire books dedicated to knight and bishop endgames. A Warhammer equivalent would be a 50-page guide dedicated to the Eldar v. Necron matchup, a guide sadly missing because we lack players with the skill or inclination to write it. If we had as much talent and knowledge, entirely new levels of Warhammer players may emerge against whom even current top players have virtually no chance of victory.

*Belisarius Cawl’s cogitators hum as he contemplates his biological adversary’s next move*

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Warhammer 40k - A Chess Player’s Perspective