This Cheapass Game is free. That’s right, free. You can print it, copy it, and share it with your friends. Obviously, if you like it, we’d appreciate a dollar or two in return. We think this is the best way to get great games into your hands, so please help us make it work.

Yes! I gave Cheapass Games $_________ for this game!

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Welcome to a magical world that’s exactly like Chess.

Tishai is a chess variant that James Ernest invented in high school. As Chess variants go, it’s pretty rad. In fact, it’s more like “a board game you play with Chess pieces” than a “Chess variant.”

The game was the centerpiece of a rambling fantasy novel that was exactly as good as you would expect from a 10th-grader who would eventually grow up to be a game designer. To wit:

Tishai, the name of the game, is short for Tishai-Fläk, which is Farnian for the “Battle for the Sword.” The game is played on a 7x7 chessboard with two 7x2 sideboards. The sideboards are for keeping score and stor-ing unused and captured pieces. You can use the pieces from a regular chess set to play Tishai, or you can carve your own pieces out of horn or bone. Along with a chess set, you will need to print and assemble the boards, included in a separate file. Or you can use a normal 8x8 chessboard, if you can remember to ignore part of it.

A magical sword called Tishai (“TEA-shy”) was forged to repel a hostile army of demons who invaded the kingdom of Farnac. After the weapon had served its purpose, Tishai became the focus of another war between the king who owned it and the wizard who had created it. This king was an inventor of games, and during the protracted Demons’ War he spent many hours creating a board game based on his obsession with protecting the sword. The sword was hidden in one of two stronghold towers, and could be transported between them by winged courier or magical device at a moment’s notice. Thus, the objective of the board game was to capture both of your opponent’s Towers. The king’s fears were not unfounded: soon after the Demons’ War ended, Abor, the wizard-blacksmith who created Tishai, attempted to wrest it from the control of the king. This was the start of the Wizard’s War. During the Wizard’s War, the two leaders were also engaged in a prolonged game of Tishai which had begun while the wizard was still in residence at the king’s castle. Events in the real world began to resemble the game, to the extent that the king was consulting his game board for tactics. At a crucial point in the War, the sword vanished, and the game began to play by itself....

Tishai is © 1997, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com

Tishai is © 1997, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com

Players: 2Playing Time: 45 minutesEquipment: The Tishai boards and a chess set.

The boards: Tishai uses one 7x7 main board and two 7x2 side boards. The main board is for the game, and the side boards are for storing and counting pieces.

Setup: The diagram above shows the placement of pieces at the beginning of the game. White always moves first.

Pieces: For you chess experts, “piece” refers to all pieces in this game, including pawns. Briefly, they are called:

Object: To capture both of your opponent’s Towers. You do not need to warn your opponent when you threaten his first Tower, but you must call “check” (or “checkmate”) when the second Tower is threatened, or you may not capture it on the next turn. It is legal, unlike in chess, to move either of your Towers into check. Obviously, you would only endanger your second Tower if you were trying for a stalemate. Stalemate: If White captures Black’s last Tower, and Black can respond by capturing White’s last Tower, the game is a draw, and neither player wins. This is not the case when the colors are reversed; the rule is based on the fact that White moved first.

Movement: None of the pieces in Tishai moves exactly as its analog in Chess. Some moves are similar, and some are quite different. It’s probably in the cases where they are close, but not quite the same, that you will be tripped up.

Pawn: The Pawns are the basic foot soldiers of Tishai. Five of your Pawns start on the board. The three others can be brought into play later by the actions of Wizards and Towers. Pawns can move only one space, and can only move forward, either diagonally or straight ahead, as shown in the figure below. Pawns can move and capture in all of these directions.

If a Pawn reaches the opposite edge, it does not get promoted. It is simply stuck there.

Knight: The Knight can move one space in any direction. It can also jump one space in any direction if there is a piece (of either color) for it to jump over. The Knight can capture the piece where it stops, not the piece it jumps over. The knight can’t jump over an empty space.

Knight’s Opening Move: On its first move, a Knight can make a double-jump (two jumps in a row) if there are pieces to jump over. The first landing space must be empty, meaning that the Knight cannot capture a piece in the middle of this move.

Tishai: The Rules

Pawn Knight Wizard Tower King

The Pawn’s Move

The Knight’s Moves

Tishai is © 1997, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com

King: Remember that the King is not the objective in Tishai, and you can continue playing without him. The King can move up to three spaces in all directions.

Wizard: This piece has a very unusual move, which grows stronger over the course of the game. Late in the game, Wizards will be your most powerful pieces. But at the beginning, they are quite limited. The Wizard moves in an “L”-shaped path: two spaces over and one space up, or vice-versa. This path must be empty, except for the final space (where an enemy piece can be captured). A more powerful Wizard can combine more than one “L” in single move. The Wizard’s Basic Move: In the figure below, the Wizard can reach any of the marked spaces, provided that a path is clear; either of the “L” shapes shown is a valid path to the marked space. An S-shaped zigzag, on the other hand, (up, over, and up) isn’t legal.

Moving Farther: Once you have captured a few opposing Pawns, your Wizards can move farther. For every Pawn beyond the first that you capture, your Wizards gain an extra segment. In other words, the range of your Wizard’s move is 1 step, or the number of Pawns you have captured, whichever is greater. In the example above, the move on the right requires four steps. You can use the inner lane of your sideboard to count the Pawns you have captured.

Captured Wizards: When a Wizard is captured, it defects to the other side, becoming a Pawn of that color. When you capture a Wizard, place a Pawn of your own color in the space that your capturing piece just vacated.

Tower: This piece moves orthogonally, exactly as a Rook does in chess, but to a maximum of three spaces.

Moving into Check: The object of the game is to capture both opposing Towers. Unlike chess, it is legal to knowingly move your Towers into check. Guard Pawn Rule: When your first Tower makes its first move, it leaves a Pawn behind to guard the other Tower. Place a Pawn of your color in the space vacated by the Tower. Weird Rule: If neither of your Towers has moved yet, you can’t use either of them to capture a Wizard. Here’s why: The first Tower that moves leaves a Pawn behind (See the Guard Pawn Rule above). Similarly, a piece which captures a Wizard will leave a Pawn behind, as described under “Captured Wizards” above. If the first Tower that moved were to capture a Wizard, it would leave two Pawns behind in the same space, so the move is illegal.

Strategy: Some basic chess-style strategy applies to this game. In addition, be careful not to give away too many Pawns unless you have already captured one or both opposing Wizards. Also, the more open the board is, the more easily the Wizards can get around, so be careful exactly where you leave the gaps.

Origins: Tishai was developed by James Ernest and John Bollinger while the two were in high school. It was pub-lished as CAG 010 in 1997 and was reprinted in Chief Herman’s Holiday Fun Pack, in 2000.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. There is a brief license rights summary on the following page.

The King’s Move

The Wizard’s Move: Basic and Extended

The Tower’s Move

Our Creative Commons Agreement

Summary: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

This agreement means...

You are free:

to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work (in this case, the electronic files that comprise the work).

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the man-ner specified by the licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). In this case, “Tishai is © 1997, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com.”

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With the understanding that:

Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. (For example, a license to manufacture, or approval to distribute a new set of rules or graphics, can be obtained under a separate agreement.)

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Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. That means including all pages of this document, unaltered.

Agora is © 2002, 2011 James Ernest and Cheapass Games: www.cheapass.com

Free? Seriously?Tell me a little more about that.

Okay, here’s the deal. If I made a great game and sold it to you for ten bucks, I’d probably keep about a dollar. If I sold it to a big game company, they’d probably make a nicer version for thirty bucks, and I’d still get about a dollar.

The rest of your money would go to printers, distribu-tors, retail stores, and at least three freight companies. And most of those guys don’t know anything about what makes a great game.

Mass-producing entertainment is a gamble. It’s a con-voluted way for creators to protect their intellectual property, by selling it in a way that is prohibitively expensive to counterfeit. And it’s getting a little old.

Why do you pay $30 for a board game? The story goes like this: the retail price of a game covers the cost of manufacturing it, and there is no way you could make your own copy for that price, to say nothing of the hassle of finding little wooden men in six colors. So, it’s worth $30 because it costs $30, QED.

But the value in a board game isn’t the manufacturing cost. It’s the play value. Unfortunately, this means that some games are priced way out of whack with what they are worth. And because the big gamble doesn’t always work out, some of your money actually helps pay for the stuff that goes straight to the dump.

I’ve decided to try a different gamble. I’m giving my games away for free. This way, you can read the rules, make a copy, and even play the thing, before you decide what it’s worth.

If you do like my games, I hope you will send me some money. But I’m also hoping you will share this experi-ment with your friends. You are my sales force, my marketing department, my demo team.

You’re also my testers, so if you can think of ways to improve my games, please share them with me. I’m easy to find at big gaming conventions, and even easi-er online. Look for Cheapass Games on Facebook, or drop me a line at cheapassjames@gmail.com.

If we do this right, we will get famous and do shaving ads. But more importantly, we will prove that there is a better way for a creator to profit from his work.

And nothing has to go to the dump.