Card Interaction Rules
Official answers for edge cases. These are settled decisions; if anything changes, we'll announce it ahead of time.
Battle Card interactions
A piece with an active card is captured. The card's remaining charges are lost for that match, but the card itself survives — it returns to your collection afterward with one durability used. You never lose a card just because a piece was captured.
A Pawn with a card promotes. The Pawn card's remaining charges transfer to the promoted piece, and the promoted piece keeps using the Pawn card's abilities. It does not become a Queen card. A promoted piece carrying Pawn-card abilities can still use them if charges remain.
Both players have the same ability active. Abilities don't cancel each other out. Both can trigger independently on their own turns — there is no counter-ability system.
Knight Outpost vs a Common attacker. A Common-rarity attacker (or a piece with no card) cannot capture a Knight protected by an active Outpost ability — the move is rejected as illegal. A Rare, Epic, or Omega attacker bypasses Outpost and captures normally.
Multiple cards charging at once. Many cards can build charges at the same time, but you may only activate one ability per turn (except Etheryst). You declare which one at the start of your turn.
A freeze would leave you no legal move. If Royal Decree, Absolute Pin or En Passant Lock would leave you no legal move, the freeze lifts for that turn and the game tells you: the lock mark comes off the piece and a line on your board says it is free this turn. This only happens when you are not in check. In check a freeze never lifts, so checkmate stays checkmate. If you have any other legal move the freeze holds, and declaring a card does not change whether you count as stuck.
A protection would leave you no legal move. A capture onto a protected piece (Leaping Strike's Knight, the squares Fortify holds) is refused and you choose another move; no turn is spent. A protection gives way first: if you are not in check and capturing the protected piece is your only legal move, that capture is allowed. A freeze lifts only if you're still stuck after that.
Your King's only move would lose the fight. In ChessVS, a capture your King would not survive is treated the way chess treats a capture of a defended piece: it never counts as a move when the game asks whether you still have one. If a King attacks a piece and loses the fight, the King is eliminated (the Honeypot), and if both pieces would fall the King still falls, so that capture does not count either. So if it is the only move you have left and you are not in check, the position is a stalemate, a draw. The game checks for it right after each move: if your opponent's move leaves you boxed in that way, it is a draw at once; if you box yourself in, your opponent gets one more move first and can still deliver checkmate instead. In check, the same position is checkmate. A capture your King wins is a normal move. If you play a losing capture anyway while you have another move, your King falls; that is the Honeypot. And a freeze or protection never counts that losing capture as your move: the card gives way instead, as above.
Gambit Card interactions
Gambit Cards are arriving in a later season. Interaction rules for them will be published here when they go live.
Tension Gauge interactions
Etheryst's First Light. Arriving in a later update. Once per match, the first ability an Etheryst card uses spends no charge. Everything else about that activation is normal, and every club, Etheryst included, activates one card ability per turn.
The FL3 ELO gate. FL3 cards unlock only when both conditions are met: the in-match Tension Gauge is at least 15 and your account ELO is at least 1,400. A high Gauge Start with a low ELO still cannot access FL3. The ELO gate is permanent and unaffected by seasonal resets.
The golden rule
When any interaction is unclear, the principle is always the same: chess wins. Cards add depth and drama, but they never break the fundamental rules of chess, and they never let a player escape a genuinely lost position.