Stealth Chess

At the end of June, we received an email from Mark Thompson with information on a variant called "Stealth Chess". Here is an excerpt from Mark's email:

Last night I was at a club meeting and played a game called "Stealth Chess," which doesn't seem to be listed yet. I think the manufacturer was called "Dice Corp.", based in California, and the copyright date was 1997. The owner said he bought it at the Learning Tree, which is a store in Chicago for educational toys and games.

Stealth Chess is a chess-under-imperfect-information variant, a kind of cross between chess and Stratego. In name and power, the pieces are standard chessmen, but they are shaped like Stratego pieces so that each player can only identify the pieces of his own army. At the start both sides arrange their armies any way they like on the first two ranks. Pawns are allowed to move two squares forward on either the first or second rank. The object is to capture the enemy King. The identity of a piece is revealed when it is captured. I think the official rules then call for the piece to be returned to its previous owner (off the board), facing away from its captor. The reason I think this is that if a pawn promotes (by reaching the 8th rank) it promotes to a piece which the enemy is not allowed to see, and this would be impractical if the captured pieces were all in the enemy's hands.

Editor's note: Stealth Chess is currently available for puchase online at amazon.com in their toys and games section. The price quoted (as of 17 August 1999) was $19.99. They also have reviews and pictures of the game.