Candlemate: Chess vs Death

Death sits across the board, and tonight you play for your life. Each night her tide of shadows comes down the board toward your king, one square a turn. Hold it back with your chess pieces, which move by the real rules, and keep your candles lit until dawn. Let a shadow through and she blows one out. Between nights, Death opens her shop. Buy cards that bend the rules of chess: pawns that capture straight ahead, a king that moves two squares, rooks whose fire burns the next shadow in line. Every run deals a different hand, and every hand plays differently. • Eight nights to survive, each harder than the last, and a final night against Death's own black queen. • 30 cards that bend the rules of chess. 17 of them are earned by playing. • Death's nights break a rule: no moon, frozen knights, a high tide, gold, silence, mirrors. • Three kings to start with, and seven grades of mourning for…