Week 10

 This week I played another variant of chess. This variant was called Fog of War. This is played like a normal game of chess, except that each player can only see the squares they can legally move to. All other squares are grayed out for them. Also, there is no check, checkmates, or stalemates. The way a player wins is by capturing the other player's king.

When playing, it made me think about the calculated risks one might take in war that involves an absence of the certainty of whether one will survive. The strategies I employed were moving pawns for the mere purpose of getting a better view of the board layout. Also, I moved rooks along files to get long range views. I lost because I didn't notice the time limit on my turn was running out and I timed out. However, it was likely I would have lost anyways because I only had a few pawns and my king left. 

The game felt just as immersive and replayable as normal chess. The game's rhetoric about war seemed different. The game's aspect of the other player's pieces being invisible highlighted the risks of war. This aspect also highlighted the tactic in war of trying to gain information about the other side. This tactic in war is not rhetorically conveyed to me at all by the normal game of chess.