In chess, a battery is a chess tactic that accumulates power, or “pressure”, either along the straights (ranges and files) or along the diagonals, attacking the enemy’s position.

Battery attacks involve a combination of rooks and queens along the lines and bishops and queens along the diagonals.

For the tactic to work, the battery cells (the pieces) must be stacked together, in neighboring squares.

These are the next battery types that you are likely to encounter, whether you use them yourself or are used by your opponent to attack your own army.

Battery type 1: tower only

This is when you have two towers working together.

It may be that your opponent has bent towers, or even a battery of towers, in a single rank or row, and you want to equalize the pressure by counterattacking with your two towers.

Or, first you want to get in there and apply pressure to a particular piece or pawn … With the latter, maybe you’re preparing to bring one of the rooks to seventh rank, where it can start chewing on enemy pawns. , at the same time that it serves to keep the enemy King stuck in his Back-Rank.

Battery type 2: Tower (s) and Queen

Instead of 2 rooks, you can also have a battery on the straights that involves a rook and your queen.

Due to the queen’s ability to move along the diagonals, it may be easier to create a tower and queen battery … With the two-tower version, you need to clear straight paths first, so that both towers can fit together in his drumming lineup. .

Typically, you would place the Queen behind the Tower so that if you choose to attack, you send the less valuable Tower to do the initial damage, knowing that it will be captured … then the Queen can submerge. in to tidy up.

Moving on from the two-piece drum set, the strongest drum type occurs when you add a queen to the two-tower line.

Again, it is often best to lead with both rooks, with the queen at the rear, to compound any damage you can deal when you drop your battery, to attack the enemy’s position.

This particular formation, where the Queen is at the base of the Battery (Queen-Tower-Tower), is known as “Alekhine’s Weapon”. It takes its name after former two-time world chess champion Alexander Alekhine used it in his games.

Battery type 3: bishops only

This type of battery will not occur as often as the other types … Mainly because, at the beginning of each game, both players do not have two bishops operating on the square of the same color.

The only time this is possible is if a player manages to bring a Pawn to his Promotion box (on the opponent’s Back-Rank) and then, instead of selecting a Queen, Rook, or Knight, chooses to promote that Pawn to a Bishop.

While it is possible, if it does happen, it will be very rare for it to happen, as the bishop is probably the least selected piece when it comes to pawn promotion.

Battery type 4: bishop and queen

If there is going to be a drum attack in the diagonals, most of the time, it will consist of a single bishop and the queen.

As with the Rook and Queen type, most of the time, you will want to lead with the Bishop and have the Queen act as a supporting piece.

The bishop and queen batteries can be used in preparation to attack your opponent’s castled King position … When the time is right, you would send your bishop first to capture one of the defending pawns (in front of the King). ..

This effectively opens a hole in defenses, allowing you to infiltrate the enemy’s Back-Rank. Your Queen acts to protect the Bishop as usually the only Piece close enough to attack the Bishop would be the Castled King himself … But, due to the Queen’s support, the King will not be able to capture the Bishop.

The enemy’s position will now be severely weakened.