Comments by fantactic1

Has anyone been able to unlock Zillions of Games to the full version?  I didn't hear back from them when I e-mailed the support team.  Guess they haven't been keeping their URL up to date, regarding the unlock order/purchase online.  Unfortunate, as there are some newer variants I wanted to try on the full version.

I've recently had the pleasure of playing a full correspondence game of Sovereign Chess, so I'm now ready to review.  The overall concept is excellent, and I know through conversations that the creator put much thought into all the principles of good game design.

Despite my five star rating I do need to mention a few criticisms, though they are minor - and a person could probably adjust the rules in their own house games anyway:

- I'm not sure if the colored square setup is ideal for creating a lot of different opening sequences, though I could be proven wrong in time.  Although I made a mistake in my game, I do feel that my original idea of occupying red as White was pretty strong and difficult to fight against (for whomever goes 2nd).  The pie rule was implemented to control this, but not sure how well that would pan out in practice.

- The board is 16 x 16, so it can definitely get a bid tedius to use pawns or knights in a genuinely effective way - except for defense.

- The rules about coup d'etat and pawn promotion regime change don't do much for me- and the less rules the better in my opinion.

Having said all that, Sovereign Chess has a lot of well-crafted rules.  The creator made sure that only one piece can control a color at a time, to make things easier to grasp and also prevent stagnant/stalemated positions.  Sliding pieces cannot go too far and gives knights a chance to thrive - or at least control the center.  The varient seems to have a lot of candidate moves at any given stage.  One could abandon their color, could try capturing the controlling piece, or simply attack the controlled pieces as needed.  Defection is a good "regime change" rule, where one decides to abadon his/her controlled pieces in favor of a better army color.  It's a lot of fun to determine the actual VALUE of certain pieces and colors, especially when trading.  An interesting tactic I found was actually abandoning a color to "neutralize it" and create an uncapturable wall around the king as needed.

Overall, I have to say that I'd play it online a lot if available.

Thanks Greg; I will try to provide a sample of the error message.  I should mention that I didn't see Review available when the computer was thinking (which is fine, as you had planned), but I had clicked on the "far back" and "far forward" buttons and that's when the error came up.

I see, yeah I’d play a game with Crown Victory as the main objective.  My strategy would be to collect Aces in hand and not use them on the board since they’re only bishops...

Nicolino, good question, and sorry if the rules were unclear - the lancer can only jump as far as the first enemy piece that it's facing.  Assuming you were talking about the very first move for white, after Le4TNW, the lancer is only attacking the b7 pawn.  Then, Black could respond with d5 and win the lancer. 

Giving some credit to H.G. Muller, perhaps we could notate that first move you mentioned Le4=nw

Very interesting and logical approach; makes sense.  When it comes to removing pawns, do you remove the pawn from only the other side too, for some tests to see that the pawn discrepancy sways the percentage by the same amount on both sides?  That is to say, some pawns' absence might actually lead to an advantagous opening, etc. which would not have anything to do with a "loss of pawn" in terms of material counting, right?

H.G. I respect your opinion on the notation.  You raise a good point about capital letters reserved for pieces, and I'd be open to adopting the promotion-type notation.

The spearmen do look similar to these lancers, but as we've both mentioned it's an exploration into a different type of "jumper" to try.

Regarding your question about the queen, it would be captured regardless, so Black would want to go ahead and take what it can: the b2 pawn.  Remember that after Black takes that pawn, the lancer is directly attacking the queen (not the king yet, per the rules about the first enemy piece in one direction)  Nevertheless, I actually need to fix my example to have the White king on f1.  Otherwise, Bb6+ and then Bd4 would guarantee a win.

UPDATE ON OCTOBER 9th: Here is the original sample position, which had a demonstrative flaw, that I refer to in this comment:

Fergus, there's a guy on YouTube who talks about boards and pieces for variant games, and not just shogi etc. but an example being Shuuro.  His YT account name is AncientChess.  Maybe he is still in operation?

Cool, thanks for verifying Joel.  You should bounce this idea off ChessWhiz, who does Twitch and YouTube demonstrations of variants.  He sometimes has guests on to explain their variant and play a game with him via Lichess/Skype.  I thought yours would interest him, because he mostly plays the 8x8 standard board with standard pieces and slightly different rules.  For Diagonal Pawn Chess, you could just use the Board Editor to make the diagonal pawn's non-capture moves.

Hi Fergus, is that your site or an external site that you wanted to share here?  If the former, I had a few questions about it.

Edwin, I haven't had a chance to play this yet and can't give a rating right now, but after reading the rules from the external website, I think it would be worth a try.  The idea of only checkmating the player to the left makes a lot of sense, so that's a good idea.  The restriction on pawn captures in the first round is practical too.

I was a bit curious about some of the other rules like this: "Kings may enter their own coloured corner square and become immune from check or checkmate, provided that both of their Bishops are not captured. When a King enters his corner square, both of his Bishops become Queens instantly."

Were those rules added to bring some more unique flavor to the game (hence the game title), or is it something you feel is necessary to avoid problems that would occur from more orthodox rules in a 4-person chess game? 

Greg, the Lancer must move before rotating; it cannot rotate as a move by itself.  The reason is to prevent the lancer from being too powerful, so choosing the direction after a move is obviously very important (one must be sure there are safe squares it could move to if attacked - or if it needs to turn around).  I also wanted to prevent someone from turning the lancer as a way out of zugzwang positions (or to avoid stalemate in a lame way).

Aurelian, I hadn't heard of Rotary before but that looks interesting too.  That one appears to have mostly sliding pieces.  For this variant, I mostly wanted to create an alternate "jumping" piece other than the knights we're used to.  It would create some different approaches to all phases of the game.  The lancers probably lose a little value in open positions just like the knight, but I'm sure they can be used for some great tactics even late in the game (such as putting a lancer behind passed pawns- maybe even more useful than a rook in that regard)

I believe a single lancer and king cannot force checkmate, but two lancers could.

I tried e-mailing a couple people at this site but might have had the wrong e-mail addresses (got kick back from the mail server).  It was basically just a question about a new game entry I submitted recently.  Just wanted to make sure I was using the correct contacts for my question.