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Chess 2. Different armies, a new winning condition, and duels. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Jeremy Lennert wrote on Sun, Jan 22, 2012 01:15 AM UTC:
The rulebook is poorly written; information is not presented in a logical order, it is difficult to tell in some cases what is a new rule and what is intended merely to explain the implications of another rule (which might not appear until later in the rulebook), and it glosses over several crucial details.  Some of the diagrams depicting unit movement are exceedingly confusing (I defy anyone to look at the diagram for Jungle Queen and guess how it moves without reading the text), and one depicts a board position that is (as far as I can tell) completely impossible.  Very low marks for editing.

The armies are rather interesting; I was expecting pieces similar to FIDE but with different movement patterns, along the lines of Chess with Different Armies, but most of the new pieces in this game have unique special rules.  There's only about 10 new things between all 5 armies, though, so if you were expecting CwDA amounts of new pieces per army, you will be disappointed.

I don't know whether any of it is balanced; it seems unlikely unless quite a large amount of testing was done (but maybe it was, I don't know).  And I wouldn't be at all surprised if a computer could discover a short forced win from some opening positions (even with the simultaneous-action dueling mechanic).  In particular, Reaper vs. Reaper looks like just a race for the midline with no significant risk of checkmate at any stage of the game.

It is also my suspicion that a computer could play this game very easily.  'Dueling' increases the branching factor (as do some of the armies), but I expect games would be much shorter, and I think computers would be better at handling most of the new elements (especially deciding when it's time for the king to make a break for the midline).