Overwatch players will knock out foes with strategic Chess Workshop mode

Blizzard Entertainment

One creative Overwatch fan has managed to bring the classic game of Chess into the Workshop mode so players can test their skills.

One of the most popular Overwatch Workshop modes ever was actually a recreation of the classic card game UNO.

The game of Chess has been around a good deal longer than UNO (by at least a millennium), but it remains to be seen if the new Overwatch version can match the popularity of the card game.

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Overwatch Workshop Island MapBlizzard Entertainment
The new Workshop Island map actually makes for a perfect chessboard.

Overwatch player and Chess enthusiast PipoSnake170 shared a video of his prototype Workshop Mode on Reddit.

As it turns out, the new “Workshop Island” map actually makes a perfect, regulation eight by eight Chessboard for the mode to work on.

Unfortunately, due to limitations in the Workshop, while Pipo may have been able to make a perfect chessboard, they weren’t able to make all of the pieces different heroes.

“Since the game only allows up to 6v6, 10 bots is the maximum I can work with, so 4-5 bots per team,” The creator explained. “Hardly enough to replace all of them with bots. But yeah I would 100% replace them with the appropriate heroes if I could.”

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Instead of heroes they used various effects to fill in for pieces that weren’t important enough to get a hero to represent them, the full list of pieces is below:

  • Pawn = Spheres

  • Rook = Ring (flat on the floor)

  • Bishop = Cloudy Effect

  • Knight = Orisa

  • Queen = Ana

  • King = Reinhart

It would be awesome to see “OWChess” played with all heroes as pieces, like Lucio or Tracer as Pawns, Bastion or Torb for Rook, and for some reason, it just seems like Moira would be a natural fit in the Bishop position.

Winston could also be switched out with Orisa, since he can jump over other heroes in Overwatch, just like the Knight can jump over other pieces in the board game.

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For players who want to test out their Chess skills in Overwatch, or just need something to do while they wait in queue, the code for Pipo’s OWChess 1.0 is: 5GV4D.

Totally Real Overwatch Facts/Tumblr
Winston is also the only Overwatch hero who actually knows the rules of Chess, according to this meme.

Apart from having actual heroes be pieces, it would also be nice to have the option to see the board from a top-down birds eye view, to make playing and planning your moves a little easier.

Overwatch devs are still rolling out Workshop updates, so maybe one day in the future we’ll see a complete Overwatch Chess set made up of entirely heroes.

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