Reading the Battle Record
Under every board sits the move strip — the running record of the game. In standard chess it would read 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 and that would be the whole story. In ChessVS the notation says more, because a capture isn't always what it claims to be: exd5 might mean the pawn took the square, or that both pawns are still standing with their Shields at zero.
So ChessVS notation reads as chess first, ChessVS second: the classic marks you know (+ for check, # for checkmate) are unchanged, and a small colored battle glyph rides after any move where a clash resolved.
The six battle glyphs
Every capture attempt resolves into one of six results — and each has its mark:
| Glyph | Result | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| ✕ | Captured | The defender falls; the attacker takes the square. The classic kill. |
| ↩ | Reverse Captured | The counter lands first — the attacker dies and the defender holds. |
| ×× | Mutual Capture | Both pieces fall. The square is left empty. |
| ⇋ | Traded Probe | No kill — the move reverts, but every wound sticks. |
| ◐ | Mutual Wound | Both hit 0 SHLD and both survive. Barely. |
| ☠ | Captured · Immune | A finishing blow on a wounded piece — the attacker takes zero counter damage. |
A worked line: 2. exd5◐ means the pawn's capture attempt on d5 ended as a Mutual Wound — check the board and you'll find both pawns still there, each one hit away from falling.
The yellow half-circle after exd5 tells you both pawns survived a Mutual Wound, while the green X after Nxe4 marks a clean capture.
Game-state marks
The strip also closes every game honestly:
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
+ | Check — unchanged from standard chess. |
| # | Checkmate — the classic mark, shown in gold. |
| ⊘ | Stalemate — chess never had a symbol for it; ChessVS does. |
| ½ | Draw. |
| ⚐ | Resignation. |
When your opponent resigns, the strip closes with a gray flag so you can see at a glance how the game ended.
Stat and ability marks
- ⚔ is ATK and 🛡 is SHLD wherever stats are written (cards, previews, stories) — you'll never see them as move suffixes.
- ⌖ marks a Pinpoint strike — the Bishop's remote drain, written like
⌖e5!when the target falls. - » marks a shove. When Defiant Step or Battering Ram pushes a piece instead of taking it, the record writes all three squares:
e4-d5»d6means the pawn went from e4 to d5 and the piece that stood on d5 was pushed to d6. The-says nothing was taken; the»is the same chevron the board draws on the square the piece was pushed to. A push off the edge of the board, or a push that was blocked, is written as an ordinary capture, because on those moves material really did change.
That's the whole language. A ChessVS scoresheet stays readable to any chess player — and tells a battle story no standard scoresheet can.