Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Nov 19, 2019 09:11 PM UTC:

Stratego is not a game of perfect information, which makes it very non-chess-like. It is somewhat similar to Banqi ("Chinese Dark Chess") in this respect. Dark Chess or Kriegspiel I also doubt, but these at least are absolutely normal Chess in all other respects, so that they would count according to the criterion that a single fatal flaw can be forgiven if it is completely orthodox in all other respects. Stratego, however, has different board size, different number of pieces, the replacement capture is subject to ranking of the type and can backfire, the royal piece does not move... Even when all pieces would be in plain view it would be nothing like orthodox Chess or one of the other major regional chess variants.

As to Clobber: I don't really believe that this should count as a chess variant, but if you think about it, it gets close. Several games normally considered chess variants lack one of the defining characteristics of chess. E.g. Suicide Chess does not have a royal piece, Marseillais Chess moves two pieces per turn. Clobber does not have many piece types, but precisely because it has only one you could consider that (extinction) royalty, and then it satisfies all other criteria. In Horde (Lord Dunsahy's Game) one of the players also only has Pawns, and in Maharadja and the Sepoys one player only has a single (royal) Maharadja.

I did not want to suggest Amazons could be a chess variant; on the contrary, I gave it as an example of a game that is clearly not a CV, but yet has a piece that moves like a Queen. To show that the fact that in Ultima most pieces move like a Queen doesn't make it a chess variant anymore than that it makes it an Amazons variant.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Chess Variant Inventors

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.