If you know my family, then you know that C is obsessed with chess. I love how easy Brain Blox makes it for everyone (even younger children) to learn how to play chess with their Fun Family Chess.
First, I want to say that this set is absolutely beautiful. The board and pieces are so well made. This set comes with a wooden chess board, 32 solid wood chess pieces (16 dark brown and 16 white), 2 velvet bags to sort and protect your pieces, a wooden chess cube, 2 reference cards, and a full color instructions booklet. You can play Fun Family Chess as well as regular chess.
Our Fun Family Chess set. You can see that the board folds in half for easy storage and the inside has a soft velvet lining.
Here you can see the pieces set up on the board. There is a picture grid on the board to help kids learn the correct placing of the pieces.
Fun Family Chess
You can see the chess cube above.
A color coded reference card makes it even easier for younger players to match up their roll with the piece they need to move.
The rules are fairly simple. The white or light team rolls first. You roll the cube and move the piece that you roll. If you can move you must. If you cannot move the piece that you roll or you no longer have that piece, you roll again until you get a piece you can move. If you roll a star, you choose which piece you want to move. There is no picture of a king on the chess cube so the only way to move it is to roll a star. As you play this game you capture your opponent's pieces by landing on the square of the piece, like in normal chess. The goal of this game is to capture your opponent's king, that's it! Once you do that, you win or vice versa.
C and F playing
F moving one of his pawns.
F thinking about his next move.
C playing a game with E.
B playing with E.
B won this round.
After you master Fun Family Chess for awhile, you can learn the few extra rules that are used in regular chess. Here they are - First, there is no chess cube used. Second, winning is a bit different. Instead of capturing your opponent's king, you essentially trap it so that they cannot move by putting it into checkmate. Third is pawn promotion. In regular chess, if you can get one of your pawns safely across the board to the other side it is instantly promoted to any piece you choose (except a king). Fourth, there is also the rule of en passant. If your opponent moves one of their pawn two spaces on their first move which lands side-by-side to one of your pawns, you can capture your opponents pawn by moving diagonally behind it. And the fifth and final rule is castling, which lets you move your rook and king in the same turn. You can only castle when both the king and the rook haven't moved yet during the game, the spaces between the king and the rook are empty, the king is not currently in check, and the king would not pass through any squares that would place it in check while castling. It might sound complicated but I'm certain that if you start with the basics and begin with Fun Family Chess, it won't be long until your are mastering all the rules of the game.
And this next video shows you how to play Fun Family Chess and walks you through some sample plays as well.
Please check out my review on Wooden Building Planks, another fun product by Brain Blox.
As always, be sure to click on the banner below to visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read more reviews of Fun Family Chess by Brain Blox.
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