Fighting Around a Frozen Army

There is no checkmate in Enochian chess. Kings are captured outright, and when an enemy takes a King, that King's whole army freezes. The frozen pieces stay exactly where they are and become inert terrain. They cannot move. They cannot be captured. They threaten nothing and give no check. And they still block every sliding line they stand on. That combination is unlike anything in ordinary chess, and it changes the value of half your army the instant it happens.

Permanent walls

Start with what frozen pieces do to sliders. Your Rook slides orthogonally and your Bishop slides diagonally, and both are stopped by any occupant of a square, frozen included. Normally a piece in your way is a problem with a solution: capture it, or wait for it to move. A frozen piece offers neither. It is a wall that will still be there in fifty moves. A frozen army sitting across the middle of the board can seal files and diagonals for the rest of the game, and a Rook that was your best piece can find itself staring at a corridor it will never travel again.

This is why the first King capture often reshapes a game more than the material would suggest. You have not just removed nine units from play. You have installed nine permanent obstacles, in positions neither side chose, and every long-range plan on the board has to be recalculated around them.

Leapers get better, sliders get worse

The pieces that ignore walls gain enormously. The Queen leaps exactly two squares in any of the eight directions and jumps whatever sits between, so frozen terrain is nothing to her at all. The Knight makes its ordinary L-jump and is equally unbothered. On a board that has gone half to ice, these two are often the only pieces with real mobility left, and a Queen who was awkward in the open game because she cannot move one square becomes the strongest piece on a crowded board. Her one limit still applies: she is bound to a single color for the whole game, so she can only exploit half the squares. See the color-bound pieces and tactics of the leaping queen.

Practically, this suggests a trading policy. Once a freeze looks likely, be slower to give up Queens and Knights and quicker to cash in Rooks and Bishops whose lines are about to close. Material counts for less than mobility on a board with terrain in it.

Terrain as shelter

Frozen pieces are not only obstacles. They are also cover, and using them well is one of the marks of a strong Enochian player. Because a frozen piece cannot be captured and cannot be pushed aside, a King tucked behind one is safe from every slider on that line, permanently. Not safe for now, safe. Look for squares where a frozen wall stands between your King and the enemy Rooks and Bishops, and remember that leapers can still reach him, so check the colors and the Knight distances before you settle in. The rules for a King under attack are in check.

A frozen army is a threat, not a corpse

The most common mistake after a King falls is to treat that army as finished. It is not. A living King who reaches his ally's throne takes command of that army, and if it was frozen, arriving there reactivates it. So every frozen army on the board is a force that can stand up again, and the trigger is a single corner square. If the frozen army belongs to your opponents, that corner is a place you must watch, because one King walking home turns nine walls back into nine attackers. If the frozen army is your ally's, that corner is your objective and the walk is worth planning several moves out. And if you do wake it, remember that command traces back to your King's life: take him and the army reverts, or refreezes. See throne seizure and reversion of command.

When the board seizes up

Enough terrain and a game can stop entirely. A locked board, where no army can move, is one of the drawing conditions, alongside the hundred-move rule, four bare Kings, and an alliance reduced to two bare Kings. This matters when you are ahead: if you are winning on material but the position is freezing shut, you may be steering toward a draw rather than a win, and the alliance that needs the game opened has to spend pieces to open it. An alliance wins only when both enemy Kings have been taken, so a board that cannot move is a board where that can never happen. Read draws and frozen armies.

Keep reading

Read the mechanic itself in frozen armies, learn what wakes a dead force in throne seizure, or sharpen your leaper play with tactics of the leaping queen.