🗺️ Roguehouse — Rules & FAQ

Roguehouse is Standard Hoard: the opponent plays ordinary standard chess, and your whole edge is a War Chest — a private stash of pieces you can drop onto the board, but each drop is spent for the rest of the run. A run is a 15-stage gauntlet against steadily stronger bots. Spend the chest to survive now, or hoard for the harder stages ahead — that trade is the whole game. Clear a run to unlock the next level.

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How a run works

Q. What is a run?

A run is a straight sequence of 15 stages. Each stage is a full game of standard chess against a bot — and each stage's bot is a little stronger than the last. You beat a stage by checkmating the bot; then you draft a Mutation (see below) and your chest tops up a little, before moving straight on to the next stage. Clear all 15 (the last is the toughest, the Boss) to win the run. A single loss ends the run.

Q. Why do some stages start from a famous opening or a strange army?

For variety and an extra difficulty knob. Instead of always starting from the normal chess position, a stage can begin from a curated position: a named opening (a dozen or so — the Italian, French, Caro-Kann, Ruy López, Najdorf Sicilian, Queen's Gambit, King's Indian and more; the stage names it, and the opening's moves play onto the board before you take over — tap to skip) or a fantasy army where the opponent starts with extra pieces. You always play the White side. An equal opening is just flavour — same difficulty, a different structure to fight from — while a fantasy start is genuinely harder (Black is up material). These strange armies can appear from stage 1 now: a modest one to start (a pair of extra pawns — the Twin Spears — or a Pawn Wall), escalating through Twin Riders / Bishops and Twin Towers to the final gauntlet. Every army is built to look clean — the extra pieces sit in a tidy, symmetric block, never scattered. The very hardest are the gauntlet armies (Iron Wall, Twin Queens): Black is up so much material that the position is near-losing as pure chess — you win it by leaning on your War Chest, not by out-chessing the board. That's the mode's promise: hard without the chest, beatable with it.

Q. The opponent doesn't drop pieces — why not?

That's the point of this mode: only you have a pocket. The bot plays plain, strong standard chess with no drops. Your War Chest is the head start that makes an otherwise-stronger opponent beatable — if you spend it wisely.

Q. Can I pre-move while the bot is thinking?

Yes. You can queue your next move — or a pre-drop from the chest — while the bot thinks; it plays automatically as soon as the bot replies (and is quietly discarded if the bot's move made it illegal). To delete a queued premove, tap an empty square on the board or right-click it (desktop) — the same as Lichess or Chess.com. (Tapping one of your own pieces starts a fresh premove instead.)

Q. Can I pause a run and come back later?

Yes — a run saves itself on this device after every move, pick and stage. Leave whenever you like (close the tab, lock your phone); the Roguehouse home then shows a ⏸ Run in progress card with ▶ Continue (picks up exactly where you were — the board mid-stage, an open Mutation draft, even a pending Redundancy retry) and ✕ Abandon (asks twice, then discards the run). Starting a new run replaces the paused one — the Start button also asks twice while a run is paused, so one stray tap can't lose it. One honest rule: pieces already loaded into a run's chest (your random piece, Fab output, boosts) are committed — abandoning the run doesn't return them. Anything still sitting in your Fabs is safe and loads into the next run.

The War Chest

Q. How does the War Chest work?

Your run starts with 1 random piece plus everything your Piece Fabs produced while you were away (see the Fabs section below), and the chest holds up to 8 (the current count and cap are shown right under the board, e.g. 4 / 8). On your turn you can drop any chest piece onto an empty square — pawns can't drop on the first or last rank — instead of moving a piece already on the board. The catch that defines the mode: a dropped piece is gone for the rest of the run and never comes back. Capturing an enemy piece does not add it to your chest. So every drop is a real decision — spend now to win this stage, or hoard for a harder one later.

Q. How do I refill the chest?

Through Mutations — there is no free per-stage pawn any more. Some Mutations give you a piece the moment you draft them (e.g. "gain a knight now"), and others pay out every stage you clear (e.g. Nanoswarm, +1 pawn per stage). So your chest income is entirely up to the build you draft (plus what your Fabs supplied at the start): pick income Mutations and synergies and the chest keeps flowing; ignore them and you'll run dry — that's the point. When the chest is at its cap, you'll be told it's full — a reason to spend and make room.

Q. Do the starting pieces really get rolled at random?

The guaranteed piece is a weighted random draw (pawns common, a rook rare, never a queen), and the game rolls your starting chest in front of you at the start of the run so you can see the draw land. The rest of the chest is whatever your Fabs supplied — that part is up to your factory, not luck.

The Piece Fabs

Q. What are the Piece Fabs?

Five little factories on the Roguehouse home — one per piece type (♙ ♘ ♗ ♖ ♕) — that produce pieces in real time, even while the app is closed. Each fab shows a progress bar toward its next piece and holds what it makes (up to its cap). When you start a run, the fabs' stock loads into your starting chest automatically (up to the chest cap — anything beyond it stays in the fabs, nothing is lost). Production never feeds a run in progress — the fabs stock your next army, not the current fight.

Q. How do I get more fabs and make them faster?

The Pawn Works is pre-built. The other four are built with diamonds (◆), and every fab has two upgrade tracks: Cap (hold more finished pieces — start is 1) and Speed (produce faster). Prices grow steeply per step (the first upgrade is cheap, the next much pricier), so a maxed factory is a long-haul project. The Overclock Artifact makes every fab faster on top — +10% per rank, up to 1.5× at its 5th rank.

Levels

Q. What are "levels"?

A level is the run's difficulty rung. Winning a run unlocks the next one, which is the same run except the opponent starts every match with a little more in hand (Level 2 gives the bot an extra pawn, and so on). You pick which unlocked level to run from the level chips on the home screen, and your choice is remembered between visits — so you can drop back a rung to farm, or jump to your best. The ladder keeps going: once you reach the top of the listed rungs, ＋ More reveals the next ones, and the opponent keeps growing.

What is the "difficulty" number? Each level shows a single difficulty figure on the picker, and the stage bar shows the one you're currently facing. It combines two honest things: how strong the bot plays for that stage, and how much extra material the opponent starts with on that level. Nothing else goes into it.

In particular, your War Chest does not lower it. A level is exactly as hard whether you arrive with a full chest or an empty one — the chest is what you beat the difficulty with, not a discount on it. That's why a stronger player and a weaker player can both clear the same level: the weaker one simply needs more pieces banked (which means more play-time), rather than being locked out. The number goes up as you climb, and it doesn't stop.

Artifacts & Mutations

Two systems give the run its meta-layer — browse the full roster on their pages:

• Mutations — passive augments. You pick one to start the run, then draft another each stage you clear, and they stack for the rest of that run. They cluster into twelve archetypes (Swarm, Grid, Chrome, Ghost, Forge, Salvage — where your captured enemy pieces feed your chest — Blade, which rewards how you finish, drop-mates and clean wins, and amplifies those finishers as you stack it, Tempo — reward for fast clears, Martyr — reward for winning lean, with a near-empty chest, Alchemy — upgrade your best chest piece one step (pawn→knight→…→queen) each stage, Momentum — reward for a flawless streak of clean wins, and Wild — flexible, adaptive picks that reward a many-theme build) so collecting several of one builds a synergy: holding two of an archetype fires a bonus, and three fires it again, bigger — so committing to one archetype pays off. The fun is in the combos: some rare cards reward a whole build — Catalyst doubles your per-stage income (up to a cap), Spectrum Engine pays you for holding a different theme (go wide), Keystone makes your strongest theme reach its next tier one card sooner, and pair cards like Reactor Core and Kiln Discipline only fire when you're running two themes at once. Others reward how you play — Salvage Protocol pays out for clearing a tough board, Beachhead starts every stage with an extra pawn in hand, Sapper Charge refunds your first drop, and Twin Forge guarantees each draft offers two cards of one theme so you can commit. A few wild rares bend the board itself: Siege Ram strips an enemy unit off the board every third stage, Paradrop starts each stage with a pawn already air-dropped forward, Assembler fuses two of your pawns into a knight each stage, and Gambit Clause guarantees a rare in every draft in exchange for a smaller War Chest — the roster's one risk-for-reward card. (The board-bending pair act on the standard and fantasy-army stages; on the famous-opening stages they hold.)
• Artifacts — permanent upgrades you buy once in the Foundry with diamonds (◆), to lower the floor for every future run (a bigger starting chest, a higher cap, a knight/bishop/rook in hand, holdings interest, faster factories, a steady ◆ income, or a free stage-retry). Each Artifact is priced by how strong its effect is — cheap info/quality-of-life ones first, the game-changing free retry as the priciest capstone. Most Artifacts have multiple ranks: buy one again to level it up — e.g. 1 → 2 → 3 knights in hand, or Overclock climbing 1.1× → 1.2× → … → 1.5× factory speed. Each rank costs more than the last, so fully maxing the Foundry is a very long-haul goal.

Q. How do I earn diamonds (◆)?

You earn diamonds by clearing stages: 1 ◆ per stage cleared (the Insurance Underwriter Artifact bumps that to 2 ◆/stage), plus a +2 ◆ bonus for clearing a whole run. So the further you get, the more you bank — win or lose.

Daily login bonus. Just opening the app each day drops a few free ◆ in your hoard — +3 on day one, +1 more for each day in a row (capped at +10/day). Miss a day and the streak resets to +3, so it pays to keep the chain going. It's a small top-up on top of what you earn from runs — a nudge to come back, not a replacement for playing.

Higher levels pay more — and it keeps going. Every level's ◆ is scaled by a level multiplier that starts at 1× on Level 1 and rises by the same step every level, so a win on the hardest level banks several times a Level 1 win, and climbing further always pays better than staying put. (The multiplier is shown on the level picker.) And the first time you beat each level, you get a one-time first-clear bonus (bigger on harder levels). Between the two, climbing the ladder is the efficient way to earn — you're not stuck re-farming Level 1. (Level 1 stays a fine, safe floor if you just want a steady grind.)

You spend ◆ in the Foundry on the Roguehouse home. Artifact costs climb steeply, and most Artifacts have several ranks that each cost more than the last — so taking the whole roster to its top rank runs into the thousands of ◆, and the capstone alone costs more than a whole good run. Unlocking everything is a long-haul goal spanning dozens of runs — you're meant to get a little stronger over a long time, not buy everything in an afternoon.

Q. Is there anything to spend diamonds on mid-run?

Yes — when you're offered a Mutation draft (at the start of a run and after each stage you clear), you can Reroll the three options for a few ◆ if none of them suit your build. It's repeatable, so your banked diamonds always have a use even before you can afford the next Artifact.

Q. What is War Chest Mastery?

A separate, slow progression that rewards just playing: every stage you clear (across all your runs, forever) counts toward Mastery milestones that permanently grow your War Chest — more starting pieces and a bigger cap. It costs no diamonds and maxes out only after hundreds of stages, so a veteran keeps getting a touch stronger for a long time. Your progress and the next milestone show on the Roguehouse home.

Difficulty

The bots ramp from roughly 2000 at stage 1 up past 3000 by the Boss. (That's the bot's strength — the difficulty number you see also adds the opponent's material head-start for the level, so it reads higher than these. See "What is the difficulty number?" above.) It's a real fight from the very first stage — often against a strange army too: you'll need synergies, powerful Mutations and a deep pocket to win, and a run with no build runs dry and loses. Spend the chest to survive the fight in front of you, but hoard enough to reach the brutal late stages. Winning a run and climbing a level makes the whole gauntlet a notch tougher again.