TacticsStep 1 of 3

The X-Ray Attack

An X-RAY: a long-range piece attacks (or defends) THROUGH another piece on the same line. Stack two rooks on a file and the back rook 'sees' everything the front one sees — it just arrives one capture later.

X-rays make counting tricky: the defender who counts only the visible attackers walks into a sequence one piece deeper than they calculated.