Today’s post brings us the first member—and leader—of the villainous Checkmate Gang!
The King
“I’m already ten moves ahead. You didn’t even know that we were playing. Make your move.”
Alias: Vasiliy Gasparov
Approach: Tactician
Archetype: Squad
Health: 25 + (
× 5)
Powers
Deduction 
Inventions 
Lightning Calculator
Presence
Qualities
Insight 
Leadership
Technology
Ten Moves Ahead
Status: Other Villains
0 Other villains in the scene
1-2 Other villains in the scene
3+ Other villains in the scene
Abilities
Check and Mate (A): Attack using Ten Moves Ahead. Use your Max die. Defend all nearby allies with your Mid+Min dice until the start of your next turn.
Masterful Positioning (A): Boost using Ten Moves Ahead and use your Max die. That bonus applies to every ally’s action until the beginning of your next turn.- Superior Coordination (A): One ally makes a basic action now, using their Max die. They reroll all 1s they roll as part of this action.
- Tactical Cooperation (I): As long as you have at least 1 nearby ally, you may reroll all 1s on your dice.
- (U) Hired Thugs (A): Replenish your hired thug minions up to .
(M) Master Behind the Curtain (I): As long as you are not directly involved in the fray and are using your influence indirectly, automatically succeed at an Overcome to manipulate a situation.
The King
Alias: Vasiliy Gasparov
Gender: Male
Age: 30s
Height: 5’10”
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black
Skin: Light
Build: Lean
Costume/Equipment: A black longcoat over black pants and a white shirt with a black chess king symbol on it, and a small earpiece.
Approach: Tactician
Archetype: Squad
Biography
From a young age, Vasiliy Gasparov was a chess prodigy. He became a FIDE Grandmaster at the age of 16. By adulthood, his skill at the game surpassed them all; there was no one left to challenge him. So Vasiliy turned his magnificent minds to other pursuits; he dabbled in mechanical engineering, but that, too, proved too easy for him, and posed little challenge. Then one day, Vasiliy was visiting the States for a tournament. After leaving the tournament building, Vasiliy witnessed a group of crooks fleeing from a bank they had just burglarised. The hoodlums saw Vasiliy too, and took him as a hostage at gunpoint. While the crooks were fleeing the police with their hostage, he observed their actions. He noticed that they were making some very large tactical errors in their flight, and helpfully provided corrections for their actions. With his help, the crooks escaped. Vasiliy was exhilarated by the experience, though, as he had finally found the one field that could provide a suitable challenge for his genius intellect—crime!
And so, taking inspiration for his new career of criminality from his lifelong passion, Vasiliy Gasparov has dubbed himself the King. But, of course, no king can accomplish anything without his army. Thus, the King swiftly went to work gathering allies to form his new criminal coterie: the Checkmate Gang.
Capabilities and Motivations
Vasiliy Gasparov is an intellectual giant. In addition to his considerable innate mental talent, he has honed his mind to the highest degree. Years of playing and studying the game of chess has taught him thousands of different tactical manoeuvres and strategic ploys. He is an expert at reading people, and is able to anticipate the actions and reactions of enemies almost unerringly. With that knowledge, the King can cut opponent’s movements off before they even make them. Further, Vasiliy has engineered a number of useful devices to aid him and his allies in his new pursuit of criminal capers.
The King is also competent at leading and organising others, which is a lucky thing for him, as despite his intellectual and technical capabilities, he is very lacking in the realm of physical confrontation. He does posses basic training in hand-to-hand combat, but is of only average strength. The King keeps in contact with his allies in the field via the use of a unobtrusive earpiece that he personally designed.
Upgrades
Even with the other five members of his Checkmate Gang, the King does realise that if he has the opportunity to gain more forces, it would be foolish to pass that opportunity up. Thus he often takes to recruiting low-level hired thugs to provide muscle for his endeavours. The King will often give such thugs monikers drawn from non-standard chess pieces, such as Alfil, Dabbabah, Ferz, and Wazir.
Editor’s Notes
Yeah, I know that there’s already at least one supervillain called “King” in comics (a member of DC’s Royal Flush Gang), and likely others, but that guy is card-themed, whereas my guy is chess-themed, so they’re totally different. ; )
I spent a long time on Vasiliy’s last name. My first idea was Kasparov, but I thought that was too on-the-nose. Then I considered Volodin and Zherdev, before ultimately settling on what you see.
Master of Conquest and Master of Enforced Order would both also fit the King’s M.O., but I felt that Behind the Curtain was the most on-theme.
Oh, and in case your chess knowledge is lacking . . .
And in case it isn’t obvious, the genesis for the King and the Checkmate Gang pretty much came from me thinking, “Can I make a whole villain team based on chess pieces?” Speaking of which, the Checkmate Gang has six members: the King, the Queen, the Bishop, the Knight, the Rook, and the Pawn, in case that, too, was not obvious. In the coming days I’ll try to post all of these folks relatively quickly, but it might take awhile. I also figured it would be better to spread them out over seperate posts, rather than clump them all in one huge mega-post.