New Game: Word Chess

[donkirkby]

This might be too strange, but lay down scrabble tiles on the middle four ranks of the board, probably face down. When you land on a tile, add it to your rack. After any move, you may add a word to the crossword beside the board. Double score for letters that were already in the crossword? Use those points to remove one or more of your opponent's pieces from the board. You can't save points between turns. Only remove pieces that you threaten?

Discard letters, if you have more than 7. Whenever you play or discard letters, draw the same number to place on the board. You choose where to place them, but you have to fill the middle four ranks before you can place them anywhere else.

Points required to remove pieces apply some multiplier to standard piece values:

Piece	Value
pawn	1
knight	3
bishop	3
rook	5
queen	9

Maybe 5 is a good multiplier, if 30 is an average scrabble score per turn.

Another option is to spell out the piece names, but that seems too arbitrary.