Game Reviews by JorgKnappen

This game should be judged by its design criteria: Given a set of pieces (in hardware), create a solid and playable chess variant for them. It think it fits this purpose well, allthough I think keeping the original movements of the Omega chess pieces makes this a rather slow game, because the pieces are short-range on a 12x12 board.

On the Omega wizard: A pair of wizards and a king cannot mate a lone king (on any conventional rightangular board). The reason is that they must switch between odd and even ranks and files all the time. On the big board the wizard is clearly weaker than the bishop; on 8x8 it may be equal or slightly stronger because of its higher mobility and forking power.

First of all, the write-up of the rules is a bit too sketchy and a lot of interpretation is needed in order to bring this game to play.

Second, it is a straight and boring win for white under the following interpretation of the rules: If a piece is watched by a knight (friend or foe) it must move and this zugzwang cannot be lifted by capturing the knight unless the capturing move is also also executed by a piece forced by a knight.

The sample game starts as follows:

1. e3 e6 
2. d3 d6   The first two moves are forced. Taking double step
3. Na3 Nh6 Other black responses won't help either
4. c3 f6
5. Nb5     Now black must move the pawns on a7, c7, and d6 while
           white has three free moves. Afterwards, the knight moves
           to c7 pressuring Ra8, Ke8, e6. White has free moves again.
           Eventually white blocks a pawn and the game is over.           
           Alternatively, white can bring out its queen to checkmate the 
           black King.

A great idea and a great story together with the traces of playtesting. This makes an excellent new chessvariant.

Of course, a cooperative game can be regarded as a puzzle for one player only (fighting againts the dice), but my experience (from playing Rengo) shows that reading the partner's ideas adds another twist to a game.

An excellent to this game!

Maybe the author has not read the comment below, otherwise he would have been frightened by the task he has underdone. On the other hand: Can a Spartan be frightened?

http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/chess-different-pawns.html

--JKn

First, an excellent to the 2 new pieces, the knave and debtor. The two are nice findings and worth the consideration of other chess variant authors as well.

It is not an excellent for the whole game, because I think board design, piece mix and rule setup don't work as well as they could. For most pieces, 10x10 is already a too large board making them slow. The standard chess bishop and queen aren't good counterparts to knave and debtor. The standard chess rules on stalemate also don't accomodate knaves and debtors well: How many of them do you need to force the checkmate of a lone king?

Knave and debtor have a strong 'shatranjian' feel; probably a very good variant is taking standard shatranj and replacing the knights with knaves and the alfils with debtors. Note that the original shatranj has only 2 alfils (where 8 are needed to cover the whole board); in the same manner shatranj with knaves and debtors has only two of each species. In shatranj, stalemate and lone king are wins, which reduces the number of draws.

I am updating the rating to excellent, because seeing the elegance of the knave and debtor pieces is obviously a non-trivial task. In fact, Abdul-Rahman Sibahi and Joe Joyce discussed the pieces (without naming them) here briefly

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?itemid=MPcomplementarit

but they didn't see that they are exceptional. Perhaps it needs some hexagonal thinking to see it.

Analysing the game deeper, it appears to me that it is too drawish to be worth playing.

The issues are mating material and crossing the channel.

Because the King is confined to his own half of the board, he cannot assist his pieces in giving checkmate. Therefore, at least two pieces (one major and one minor one) are needed for checkmate.

There are at least three rule changes lifting this severe condition: a) [most elegant] import the rule from chinese chess, that the Kings may not face each other. With this rule, King+Rook win against a lone King b) Declare bare King a win as in Shatranj c) Declare Stalemate a win (and not a draw).

The rules with the ferries are incomplete; I interpolate the following additional rules:

* Pieces on the ferry are vulnerable to capture

* The ferry loaded with a piece can capture another piece

* An empty ferry sent to an occupied square does not capture, instead it is mounted by the piece there

* An empty ferry cannot be sent to a square occupied by a dragon

I cannot interpolate whether a rook or dragon may 'fly' over an empty ferry or not.

The major issue is, that after crossing the channel, the piece on the ferry is essentially unprotected. It can be protected only by a rook or queen - it does not help against double attack. Therefore crossing the channel is hard. Wessex has a severe handicap here, because it lacks  rooks and owns only one queen.

Wales can try to monopolise the control of the ferries by bringing them both to its side: Only the Wessex' queen can than occupy the ferry and send it back. But, I'm afraid, this is also only a drawing strategy.

This is a double excellent for this game.

The first excellent goes to Hans for digging this game out and posting it here.

The second goes to the game design: The inventor has really thought hard of the initial position, and it makes a fine game. There is a lot of tactical tension in the setup, but there are no obvious exploits. Great game!

This is a good game: It is fun to play. I even like the name showing some humour.

Since Charles suggested elsewhere to drop or change this game: please let it stand here as it is. It even inspired another game (I'm a Ferz, get me into there).

All in all, this game has well thought 'game mechanics' and is worth keeping.

I like the idea of the many interesting new endgames. I just hope that the endgames 3 vs. 2 are decisive (at least when one of the 3 is an adjutant and the left over piece from the 2 is a minor one); otherwise the game will be very drawish.

Great game!

There is a minor glitch in the first diagram: It has two back Leopards (artefacts from an earlier version that was discarded?) in e/i 12.

This poor goes to the author who talks a lot about ethics, but always rates his own creation "excellent".

Nice game with the obvious traces of play-testing.

It is not explicitly stated in the description: I assume, the game ends when the King is checkmated on the top board, i.e., a King cannot be "buried"?

An excellent for the great rewrite.

Another close (but not exact) match is the Eohippos (German Urpferdchen) from 10 directional chess (see http://www.chessvariants.com/contests/10/10_directional.html ). It moves and captures the same way, not in a pawnish style.

The Knight-Fers compound (NF) is also often seen under many different names, my favourite name is Dullahan (a male counterpart to a Banshee, featured under this name in the "Fearful Fairies" http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/fearful-fairies – other names include "prince" (problemist usage) or "Priest" (Scirocco, http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/scirocco )).

The Squire Knight is a definitely a Rook-class piece with 4 new capturing moves and 2 new non-capturing moves. Experience shows that additional capturing moves are worth more than additional non-capturing moves. The Squire Knight has 12 targets to aim at ... quite impressive.

I am pretty sure that Squire Knight makes an enjoyable and easy-to-learn chess variant.