Ooh yeah. I was imagining a modified chess engine controlling the red team but I like the dice. Simpler and possible to play with a regular set + red checkers for the queens (and dice ofc). maybe for each deadlock, roll a die and on a nat 1 both convert? That way there's always a risk to leaving them alone. maybe the threshold starts at 1 and increases each turn they remain deadlocked.

For movement, each player rolls a die and moves the Nth queen, counting either up from a1 or down from h8, depending on which player is rolling. If the roll is higher than the number of queens, the farthest one moves. a d8 determines direction.

You could even do everything with just d6s, if that's all you have. 1-4 is cardinal directions, 5 is diagonally toward the center, 6 is diagonally away from the center. Or something like that.