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Giant Chess. 16x16 board with the same pieces as Turkish Chess, but also the "Dev" piece which takes up four squares. (16x16, Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Szling Ozec wrote on Fri, Feb 26, 2016 10:39 PM UTC:
Perhaps a piece with the combined movements of the knight and flamingo(1,6 jumper). The flamingo move would allow the piece to be much more mobile on the large board, it might be a good idea to restrict the flamingo move to passive only as this would allow the piece much greater mobility without too greatly increasing its attack capabilities.

Daniil Frolov wrote on Wed, Jan 22, 2014 12:10 PM UTC:
I would allow knights (and pieces with knight's component) to make also 4:2 leap (in addition to tandart 2:1 leap) - to respective square in 2x2 zone, wich would be giant knight's leap away.
In corresponding to board's large size, large amount of pieces, and division into 2x2 zones.

Malcolm McLeod wrote on Wed, Apr 17, 2013 11:44 PM UTC:
It looks awesome, but it seems like the knights are really useless on this board and further damaged by being so far back. I think you should also try to increase your piece diversity.

George Duke wrote on Wed, Aug 4, 2010 03:35 PM UTC:
Frolov's ''Xiang-qi Moving Palace and River'' is as a piece occupying nine squares. If putting a Withdrawer in there, it is possible moving Palace may capture 4 units at once. Dev here and Cobra and couple others take up four squares at a time. ''Chess on a Longer Board With a Few Pieces Added'' adopts the two-spaces Wall of Hedden in 2001.

John Smith wrote on Mon, Nov 9, 2009 02:17 AM UTC:
As a variant, you could have partially-captured Devs. This could either have its squares captured individually, or have the captors attach to it and move with the Dev, contributing to its feeling of size.

John Smith wrote on Tue, Feb 17, 2009 01:26 AM UTC:
Interesting piece; Dev. I suggest you allow 4 pieces to move per turn, Devs captured only by 4 pieces. Speeds up the game, I think!

George Duke wrote on Wed, Sep 10, 2008 05:16 PM UTC:
For Giants fans. Playing in 3 of the 6 Game Courier logs so far in GC five-year history, I attest that Giant Dev, occupying 4 squares, makes the game such as it is. Dev moves two squares never one. Jeremy Good clarifies Dev must be attacked at all four squares for capture. Unfortunately, Chess Variant artwork without exception gets much admired and hardly played at all; and that's the whole point of free-expression proliferation, started by Ralph Betza's going hog-wild around year 2000.

Rich Hutnik wrote on Mon, Apr 7, 2008 07:14 PM UTC:
When you are looking at that many pieces, my take is being able to move more than one piece per turn is a must. One could even mix this up a bit by having commander pieces that, if capture, reduce the amount of moves you get per turn by one. So, if you have 4 moves per turn, if you capture on, the number of moves is reduced to 3, etc... These commanders could actually replace the King piece. I am borrowing a bit from Chieftain Chess here, but so be it. It is just an idea. I actually dabbled with this concept awhile back with Conquest, in a variant where you only moved so many pieces per turn, and had number of moves reduced with each section of the enemy fort that was captured.

George Duke wrote on Mon, Apr 7, 2008 07:10 PM UTC:
Noting that I have played half, 3, of the 6 altogether Game Courier logs of Giant Chess in all five years, please avoid changes in Giant Chess. It plays well just the way it is, because Dev balances the board size. Karakus already now has the four-move-per-side option as the first form recommended.

Rich Hutnik wrote on Mon, Apr 7, 2008 02:30 AM UTC:
I am wondering if something could be added in order to allow the mobilization of more than one piece during a turn. Perhaps have a commander unit that mobilizes a bunch of pieces that are near it, like Joe Joyce uses in his Chieftain Chess:
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSchieftainchess

Koksal Karakus wrote on Sat, Sep 1, 2007 05:51 PM UTC:
I don't know what I was thinking back then, but If I had an option right
now I would rename the 'Shogi' piece to 'Cannon' as it should be, and
I would change the figure accordingly. Same thing applies to the Turkish
Chess variant I created around the same time.

We are currently playing this game as: White plays 2 moves with different
pieces first, then each side takes turns playing 4 moves all of which has
to be with different pieces. This seems to speed up the game considerably.

Abdul-Rahman Sibahi wrote on Thu, Feb 8, 2007 02:25 PM UTC:
How is castling done in this game ? It might make a nice variant if it was pawnless (or with Berolina pawns) AND played with the Grid chess system. Of course in this case the Dev should be captured like the Wall.

Jeremy Good wrote on Thu, Jun 22, 2006 12:15 PM UTC:
It might make some sense to allow pawns on the fifth rank to make a triple move, in addition to the double move.

Jeremy Good wrote on Mon, Jun 19, 2006 09:55 PM UTC:

The Dev appears to be a lot less vulnerable than two other well known multiple occupancy pieces, Peterson's Cobra and the wall. The rule for capturing the Dev is this: 'Devs can capture devs directly. However the other pieces of the opponent can capture the dev, if all of the four squares that dev is standing on are under threat ...' In the case of the wall and Peterson's Cobra, the entire entity is destroyed if any part of it is attacked without the whole being threatened. So the Dev suffers from weaker movement ability but this is partially compensated by greater invulnerability.

David Howe has written an essay about pieces of differing size - Growing and Shrinking: Playing with the Size of Chess Pieces. The notes to that page reference a few more such pieces.

Mark Hedden should be mentioned here as having made significant contributions to this genre of variants using multiple occupancy pieces (as well as multiple occupancy squares).


(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Sat, Aug 6, 2005 03:54 AM UTC:
The symbol for the Shogi isn't very good, it probably should be called a cannon, and the correct symbol should be used (the Xiang-qi cannon symbol. The one you used means 'Flying Chariot'). Of course if you don't have a set for this game, or Shogi either, I guess you might use whatever you have...

George Duke wrote on Fri, Feb 11, 2005 07:04 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
'GHI,LargeCVm': 'Shogi' is Xiangqi Cannon, and Elephant is its diagonal equivalent, Vao or Canon, invented by Thomas Dawson early 20th century. The innovation in this game is the Deve, which occupies four squares(2x2) at once. Deve's move is two-square(in a block) never one-square(See diagram). Cobra Chess starts 'sub-cross-thread' of pieces that move to, or have effects over, more than one square. Whilst same-coloured pieces cannot stand at either one's squares, Cobra occupies a single point, or intersection, and can move 'between' same-coloured pieces along grid-lines. Both Deve and Cobra always have effects, and vulnerability, over four squares. More mobile Cobra can be captured at any of its four positions. Deve capture is accomplished by three-square control and fourth-square arrival by opponent.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sun, Dec 7, 2003 06:57 AM UTC:
I would assume that promotion on ranks 2 and 15 is optional, while the promotion on 1 and 16 is mandatory. Very occasionally it would be advantageous not to promote a pawn (say to avoid stalemate).

Miles wrote on Sun, Dec 7, 2003 02:08 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
This is the best large chess variant I have ever seen! But I have one question: how can pawns promote on rows 1 and 16 as well as rows 2 and 15? If a pawn reaches row 2 or 15, wouldn't it automatically promote since it only moves one square at a time (aside from the initial double step move)? In that case, it seems rather impossible for the pawn to promote on rows 1 and 16.

Ben B. wrote on Sat, Oct 26, 2002 04:30 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
This game was a lot of fun. You start forming larger tactical plans and not worrying about the details so much, since being down by several pieces is gerenally not a huge disadvantage. Just make sure you set aside enough time to play it. The Devs were a fascinating piece, they didn't stomp all over everything like I thought they would. In fact, they proved fairly easy to defend against with the immense amount of pieces on the board, instead proving their worth in psychological value and tying up opponent's pieces that were defending against it. The Devs only captured six pieces, total, during the game, three of which were pawns.

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