Overview
This quick guide explains how to relatively quickly find a legal TIME move to get yourself out of those checks/draws in which there doesn’t seem to be a legal move, yet the game still continues.
Getting out of tricky checks/draws
Just a saying it again if you’ve missed it, this is a guide about finding legal TIME moves.
Before anything else, make sure the check/draw isn’t occurring on an inactive board and that you can’t just simply move the king somewhere else.
To find which piece(s) can go back in time, you must first (This is the most important step to do to gain time) completely ignore any boards that have pieces on them that are checking one or more of your kings*, because no matter what you cannot play a time move on those. (Even if you could, that would switch the turn to your opponent, who could just then take your king.)
Note that this only includes boards with the attacking piece(s) on them, because the target king may be on another board on which you can still make moves.
Then, verify every possible piece movement in this order :
- Verify every possible queen movement.
- Completely ignore any rooks that either didn’t move or captured a piece during your previous turn, as those can’t go back in time, and verify the move of the others.
- Verify every possible bishop movement.
- Verify every possible knight movement.
- Verify every possible movement of every other piece.
If the check/draw is happening on a timeline that happens to be in the past of the other timelines, it may mean that in those future timelines,
you only have a limited number of pieces that can go far enough back in time. Here is a list of pieces and how many turns back in time they can possibly go :
- Pawns, brawns, kings and common kings : [1]
- Knights : [2]
- Unicorns and dragons : [7]
- Rooks, princesses, queens and royal queens : [Possibly up to the same number of turns that have been played.]
- Bishops : [Either 7 or possibly up to about the same number of turns that have been played as long as the there have been at least the same number of timelines made.]
*Sometimes a check may occur only through timelines (and not time), in which case you can play a move on a timeline which contain a checking piece.
However, you should avoid doing so if possible, because unless your opponent play a move on that timeline or you somehow create (assuming it doesn’t already exist) a way to move the king out of range of the attacking piece, it’ll be checkmate when the Present reach that point and you have no way of going back in time.
Note :You sometimes cannot possibly prevent the check/draw, and the game hasn’t ended yet because you can still do legal moves.
In such situations, you have no choice but to either play those moves or forfeit.
Those situations aren’t exclusive to this game, and are present in classic chess too.