THE SCHOOL OF THE GRAND GAME
A familiar foundation. An extraordinary army.
Your complete guide to the rules played here.
01 / FIRST, FIND YOUR BEARINGS
The main board has 11 files (a–k) and 10 ranks. Two extra squares are citadels: ivory’s lies just right of k2; obsidian’s lies just left of a9. The other spaces outside the rectangle are not playable.
Each army begins with 28 pieces. Ivory (White) moves first and advances toward rank 10. Obsidian (Black) advances toward rank 1. The opposing army is a 180° rotation, not a vertical mirror.
Capture by landing on an enemy piece. You may not land on a friendly piece, except through a permitted special exchange or pawn relocation. Pieces that leap ignore intervening occupants; sliding pieces do not.
Read left to right, a through k. Dots are empty squares.
02 / KNOW YOUR ARMY
These diagrams show movement on an otherwise empty board. The piece begins in the center. Filled dots are destinations; amber rings are pawn captures. Lines continue beyond the diagram when the rule allows.
03 / THE PAWNS’ JOURNEYS
Each ordinary pawn immediately promotes to its assigned piece on reaching the farthest rank, even if that piece already survives. The king’s pawn becomes a Prince. Its identity travels with it, regardless of its current file.
On its first final-rank arrival, it becomes immobile, non-attacking and immune to capture.
On a later own turn, relocate it to a main-board square where its pawn attack forks two enemies or traps an enemy nonroyal. This consumes a whole turn.
An ordinary friendly or enemy occupant is removed. A royal or immune piece may never be removed this way.
Advance on the second journey. On reaching the last rank again, it immediately resets to the original king-pawn square: f3 for ivory, f8 for obsidian.
An ordinary occupant is removed. If a royal or immune piece blocks the reset square, the pawn waits immune on the last rank. A later permitted reset consumes a turn.
After the reset, advance on the third journey. Reaching the last rank now makes it an Adventitious King.
It moves like the Shah, joins the royal succession, and has the unique right to enter its own citadel.
04 / THE ROYAL HOUSE
With exactly one surviving royal, it cannot be captured or left in check. Checkmate wins. Stalemate is also a loss for the player with no legal action, unlike modern chess.
With two or more friendly royals, check restrictions are suspended and those royals may be captured normally. When only one remains, the single-royal protection applies again.
Once per side, a Shah that is checked, or has no other legal action, may exchange positions with a friendly nonroyal on the main board. Immune pawns cannot be exchanged.
This uses a whole turn. If the result leaves just one friendly royal, it must be safe. The engine considers this escape before declaring mate or stalemate. If the exchange carries a pawn to its last rank, promotion applies.
05 / THE TWO CITADELS
Only your highest-ranking surviving royal may enter: Shah → Prince → Adventitious King. Entry is a normal one-square royal move, including diagonal adjacency.
Choose one of the actions offered:
Only your Adventitious King may enter it. Once there, it is immune and blocks the opponent’s citadel entry.
Its immunity continues even if it becomes your only royal. This reconstruction does not invent a forced evacuation.
PRACTICE / AN OPPONENT AT ANY HOUR
Choose Vs Computer before creating a table. You play Ivory and move first; the native assembly engine plays Obsidian. The same rules and legal actions apply. Your game and its difficulty survive a server restart.
Set the Elo: 400–2400 slider in steps of 100. Approximate difficulty, not a measured Elo rating. These numbers are not calibrated against standard chess or a Tamerlane rating pool; they label the engine’s difficulty settings.
You may still invite up to twelve spectators. There is no opponent invitation in computer games. Difficulty stays fixed for that game; start a new table to change it.
You can resign, and legal citadel draw claims remain available. Negotiated draw offers are available only when playing another person. The board displays when the computer is thinking; there is no need to refresh.
06 / A TRANSPARENT RULESET
Historical descriptions are not perfectly uniform. This app implements the standard 28-piece Tamerlane game, not the disputed “Full Tamerlane” variant. This edition uses timur-playable-v1.
These are explicit, deterministic adjudications, not a claim that one surviving manuscript settles every case. The downloadable source includes the complete RULES.md.
These are accessible secondary reconstructions. No independent primary-manuscript verification is claimed.
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