Ratings & Comments

Ok, I thought it is like in tenjiku shogi!

I've never had a problem with them and it's still unclear to me what that would look like.

They work the same as in the interactive diagram, only jumping over enemies.

That's perfect.

@Aurelian: I found the Joker difficult to play on-line because you need to have in mind what was the last piece moved and that the Joker mimics. If you play several games in parallel and that a succesive move may happen in the next days, it is difficult. Maybe this is why this interesting piece lacks of popularity. It is probably different when played over a board and in a short time frame.

better like this ?

It seems people are not that interested in this topic. I'm thinking that this is because there is not a lot of experience in games with jokers.

Anyway after a intensive series of games played against the ID these days, I have concluded that on a 10x10 board at least things are ok. What bad thing that can happed is to lose connected pawns, because then the joker is not easily trapped by just moving a pawn. So one has to protect connected pawns, especially near the king, even from sacrifices. That is actually a strategic choice on part of the attacker. I think this is actually a good thing.

So my own verdict is that on a 10x10 board the joker works.

Flying pieces still do not fly!

@François Houdebert,

I noticed a bug in the Hectochess implementation. When castling, the starting squares of the Champions and queenside Knights (b2/b9, c2/c9, and i2/i9) are not being checked to see if a piece is occupying them or not, allowing castling when it should not be possible to do so.

I notice that Lev nominated Seireigi, so in addition to my nomination of its larger cousin (Dai Seireigi) I'll throw in a second for Seireigi for future features.

You must really like Dai Seireigi...I'm honestly quite surprised. Sure, I consider the Seireigi family my best set of works so far, but I didn't think anyone would be so quick to nominate Dai Seireigi. If anything, I thought Chu Seireigi would be nominated faster (second to normal Seireigi of course). That being said, I can definitely see the appeal, with the homages to the large historical Shogi variants and all.

By the way, Seireigi and Chu Seireigi can now be played via Jocly on the CVP, thanks to François Houdebert and H. G. Muller, and if the former is crazy enough, he may even try to implement Dai Seireigi.

Note to (other) Editors: While Dai Seireigi hasn't been played in its current, final form on Game Courier yet, it does have a recorded history of development versions being played on Game Courier. Whether this would make it eligible to be featured is up for debate.

The author, A. M. DeWitt, has updated this page.

The author, A. M. DeWitt, has updated this page.

The author, A. M. DeWitt, has updated this page.

It should be ok now

The two rooks, bishops and knights do not differ and can no longer be distinguished in the course of the game. How is a strategic game supposed to come about then?

You can differ them:

• in offline play by sticky markers;
• in online by notation used.

BTW I have recently done the rules page.

282. Sandworm. This spawned from a recent comment on this list, like a throwaway line in a movie that becomes a classic.* This is inspired by the creatures from well-known desert planets in the Star Wars and Dune franchises (Tattooine and Arrakis, respectively), but it's not the full-sized version (which probably would be something to go into a four-square space, though with rather similar moves). This can be thought of as a "Juvenile Sandworm."

A main feature of the fictional sandworms is that they burrow underground, so as a piece the Sandworm simulates that by jumping others. At its basic, it slides in any radial direction, like a Queen. In the interest of game balance, I limit that to two pieces that it can burrow under, though in games with particularly large armies that may increase. If there are no pieces to burrow under and the Sandworm moves no more than 4 spaces to capture, it may continue to capture another piece in the next square. ((paf)2QcyafQ4)

In this (hopefully not overly confusing) diagram, the White Sandworm is able to capture any of the Black pices on the board. The only two that it can capture in a single move, however, are the Knight (i9) and Queen (j10), since the Knight is only 3 spaces away, the Queen is in the next adjacent space, and there are no intervening obstacles.

I probably could've posted this much earlier, but (aside from the previously-mentioned issues at Thingiverse) the shape kept coming out so that Thingiverse's sample-graphic (above) made it look like... well, something that probably shouldn't be shown on this site. It still kinda does, but I think it reads OK. (I might see about making the teeth large enough to be visible in the image.)

*It's even happened to my own comments, at the Super-Team Family: the Lost Issues blog. I was only kidding when I mentioned Snow White and the Seven Soldiers of Victory -- which became my first idea to be published there -- and my remark about Bugs Bunny vs. Doctor Doom was supposed to be an example of things we probably wouldn't see done!