To play Level-Up Chess, in addition to a standard chess set you’ll need some way of clearly marking a piece that’s been leveled up, such as by placing a checker underneath them.

Level-Up Chess begins like any other version of chess, but when a piece performs a capture it levels up to a more powerful piece, as follows. When a piece levels up, it gains new options for movement, but also retains all movement options of its old form.

• Pawn -> Squire: May move as a knight, but only forwards. Squires may be promoted upon reaching the last rank, like a normal pawn.
• Bishop -> Archbishop: May move one space orthogonally.
• Knight -> Crusader: If the Crusader captures a pawn or squire, it may immediately move again. This second move may not result in a capture.
• Rook -> Raider: After the rook captures any piece, it may move one space orthogonally.
• Queen -> Empress: May move as a knight.
• King -> Emperor: May make two moves in a row. Can not move into a square which would place it in check, even if it could then move out of check.

Note that in the case of the Knight and the Rook, they may not perform a second move on the same turn that they’re promoted as they weren’t yet a Crusader or Raider when they made the capture.

Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer, has been updated. Upgrades include…

• Dragonspire cards added
• Interface streamlined
• Performance/startup time dramatically improved
• Fixed issue with Blind being chosen when someone who can destroy diseases is needed

Thundermaster is designed to work well on… pretty much everything. It will run on…

• Computers (tested in FireFox, Safari, Chrome and Opera… sorry, Internet Explorer not supported)
• iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad)
• Android phones
• Windows Mobile phones (using Opera Mobile)
• Amazon’s Kindle 3rd Generation
• Almost anything with a Javascript-capable browser!

It’ll automatically resize to be a good fit for your screen.

If you play Thunderstone, I highly recommend giving this a try. I won’t play Thunderstone without it, and I’ve had several people on BoardGameGeek tell me the same. It’s completely free and easy to use… so give it a try!

http://asmor.com/scripts/tsrand/

I’ve updated Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer, with the cards from Doomgate Legion.

I’ve just completed work on Thundermaster, my intelligent Thunderstone randomizer.

Thundermaster will ensure all the tools you need to defeat the monsters in the dungeon and get the most out of your heroes are always present. Never again must you suffer through an agonizingly slow game just because of bad luck in randomization.

Thundermaster can be used offline (just save the page, making sure to save it as a “Web page, complete”) and is also designed to be easily usable on any touch screen phone. Thundermaster has been tested and works in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera (on Windows, though it shouldn’t matter). It also mostly works in Internet Explorer 8, although there are occasional hiccups.

What are you waiting for? Try Thundermaster now!

This is a variant for the deck building game Thunderstone. The basic premise of this variant is that, rather than a single village and dungeon, there are a number of villages and dungeons which the brave adventuring parties may go between.

I’ve playtested this variant once. The game lasted about an hour for 4 players. Final scores were 54, 49, 37 and 28.

Preparation

In addition to a copy of Thunderstone, you’ll need a pawn for each player to represent which village their party is currently visiting.

Village and Dungeon Setup

Shuffle the monster randomizers and deal out 6 randomizers, 2 each in 3 rows. The rows will represent the different villages.

For each village, take the two sets of monsters featured on that city’s randomizer and shuffle them together. Important: These monster piles are not the dungeons!

To form the dungeon for each city, take the top 10 cards from each monster pile from the other two cities. In this way, each city’s dungeon will be built from monsters whose randomizers are in other cities. Deal out 3 monsters from each dungeon as normal to form the hallway.

Now, for each village randomly choose one of the two randomizers to be the current bounty, and place the other one face down beneath the current bounty.

If you only have the base game, shuffle the remaining monsters to form a random encounter deck and set it aside. If you have expansions, use the monster randomizers to pick 4 types of monsters for the random encounter deck.

Finally, use the village and hero randomizers to assign 2 sets of hero cards and 4 sets of village cards to each village.

Player and Deck Setup

In turn order, each player chooses a home village and places their pawn there. The players then create their starting decks as follows:

• 4 Militias
• 1 Dagger
• 1 Torch
• 1 Iron Rations
• 1 of each level 1 hero available at their home village
• 3 different village cards available at their home village

Gameplay

Except as noted here, the game plays as normal.

In addition to visiting the village, entering the dungeon, and resting, players may also travel on their turns.

Visit the Village

When a player visits the village, he may only buy cards available at the village he’s currently at.

Leveling up Heroes

A player may level up militia only into level 1 heroes available at the current village. All other heroes may be leveled up as normal regardless of which village they’re normally purchased from.

Collecting Bounties

In addition, the player may reveal a monster card in his hand matching the village’s current bounty. For example, if the current bounty was “Doomknight – Humanoid,” the player could reveal Lord Mortis, Darkness, or any other monster with that type. When a player does this, he takes the randomizer and keeps it in front of him to show he’s collected the bounty. The bounty is worth 3 points at the end of the game.

If there was another randomizer under the collected bounty, turn it face up to become the new bounty. If this was the last bounty, then the village no longer offers any bounties.

After a player turns up a new bounty, if they turn up a new one and can fulfill that as well they may.

Enter the Dungeon

When a player enters the dungeon, they must battle a monster from the dungeon of the village they’re currently at. If defeated, the monster is replaced as normal from the village’s dungeon. If the player is defeated, the monster is placed at the bottom of the village’s dungeon and replaced as normal.

Spoils

If you have a spoils ability, you may only buy items from the local village.

Travel

The player reveals the top card of the random encounter deck and fights it. This is treated exactly as if the player had entered the dungeon, with the following exceptions. If the player is successful at defeating the monster, he may move his pawn to any other village. If the player is defeated, his turn ends and his pawn stays in the same spot. Regardless of the outcome of the battle, the monster is placed at the bottom of the random encounter deck. A player may never under any circumstances add a monster to his deck as the result of a random encounter.

For all purposes including light and other card effects, the monster is treated as though it were in rank 2 of a dungeon’s hallway.

Spoils

If you have a spoils ability during a traveling turn, you may only purchase your item from the village you’re traveling to.

Game End and Victory

The game ends when one of the two following conditions are met:

• Any dungeon is completely exhausted (i.e. no cards left in the deck and all monsters in the hallway killed).
• Any two villages have no bounties left.

If the game ends because of a dungeon deck becoming exhausted, the player who killed the last monster there gets the Stone of Mystery thunderstone, worth 3 victory points.

Tally up victory points as normal. Each collected bounty is worth 3 points. The winner is the player with the most points. In case of a tie, the player with the most collected bounties and thunderstones wins. Further ties should be broken with fisticuffs.