Ratings & Comments

I was just getting the same kind of error while working on updating Grand Chess to use the fairychess include file. To fix it, I had to make sure my piece assignments were complete, and since I was using an alias for the Cardinal, I had to make sure that the alias operator got used in all the appropriate places.

I do expect this to be more drawish than fide chess. I think you would need to pair this with some other significant changes to the game in order to fully take advantage of it. Like maybe more power on the board, or another win condition, or a drop mechanic or something.

I'm most interested in what this would do to the opening though. That would be fun to see.

This variant was very influential on me; I found it specifically because I was looking for variants that used cannons, but the pawns really hooked me.

I'm in agreement that the starting position is odd. I would push everything back a row, and then just find a starting square for the nightriders that makes sure they're not immediately attacking anything. 

This is kind of a criticism of the nightrider itself, but in practice it's probably not fun to constantly keep track of what pieces it's threatening from far away. The piece seems fun but I feel like there are other possibilities that don't require so much 'proofreading' of the board.

I like the 'king reaches the last row' win condition. On such a large board, especially if everything were pushed back a row to begin with, it may be logical to change that to 'king passes the midline.' Not necessary, but not an extreme possibility either.

Thanks for the information. I looked through the scenes in these two episodes, and I found the Gothic set in "The Naked Time," but I could not find any scene with 3D Chess in "Day of the Dove." Curiously, both episodes had Sulu wielding a sword.

Absurdly extravagant is the phrase that comes to mind!

Nothing else quite like this on the website; a true push-the-theoretical-envelope, but still playable, variant. It's amusingly written, too. Great job!

On second thought, this makes the Queen immune to the Cavalier King capturing it as a Knight. However, the Queen is also immune to being captured at a distance by the other royal pieces. Each compound royal piece can capture two of the simple pieces at a distance. The Cavalier King can capture the Rook or Bishop at a distance, the Dragon King can capture the Bishop or Knight, and what I'm now calling the Pontiff can capture the Rook or Knight. So, it's all symmetrical, and if I made an exception for the Cavalier King's Knight leap, that would make it more formidable than the other two compound royal pieces.

Very good, well-thought out game, with pieces which compliment the board--some require elevator movement, some use the empty shafts, and the ox can use them to capture. Nicely done.

I will say the rules allowing the flying pieces to go 'up, through an elevator trapdoor' feel very unintuitive; especially if playing with a physical set. It makes more sense to me to allow flying pieces to go either up or down through the empty shafts only; this would also make it impossible to threaten an identical piece without also being in danger.

Still, a very good variant!

No, those discussions are about the interactive diagrams.

Ughh, this was a case of a >= that should have been a > in the Diagram script. The algorithm is that the promoOffset is added to promotable pieces (all types from 1 up to and including maxPromote) to get the promoted type. When this gets larger than the number of defined pieces, it is replaced by the promoted type of the first piece. The latter was introduced to not explicitly have to define all the Golds that result from promotion of a host of different Maka Dai Dai Shogi or Thai Shogi pieces; if the first piece is a Pawn, and promotes to Tokin, all pieces that also promote to Tokin can then be put last amongst the set of promotable pieces. After that can follow the unpromotable pieces, and then all the promoted types that are explicitly defined. So if (say) maxPromote=10, and promoOffset=15, piece 1 will promote to piece 16, pieces 11-15 will be unpromotable. Piece 16 and higher are the promoted types. But if only six are defined (16-21), these will be the promoted versions of 1-6, and 7-10 will all promote the same as 1, to 16.

I fixed it now, thanks for reporting.

When I try to promote a Dragon King, it promotes to a Tokin instead of a Soaring Eagle. However, this can be easily fixed by making the King the last piece and changing the parameters accordingly.

When I try to promote a Dragon King, it promotes to a Tokin instead of a Soaring Eagle. However, this can be easily fixed by making the King the last piece and changing the parameters accordingly.

> It would need some rule that you cannot move a royal slider through check, like in Caissa Brittannia, to make it a serious game.

Since I was just thinking of another rule I wanted to change, I opened my .zrf file for this game to see how I could make the change. When I did open it, I noticed that I made some rule updates in 2006, but I never changed the rules on this page. One of the rules was the one you suggested here. Here are my comments from the .zrf file:

; *** Rules changed in February 2006
; *** King cannot initiate fusion.
; *** Simple pieces may initate fusion with King.
; *** Dragon King and Pope may not move through check.

As the rules are currently written, the King may initiate fusion, but another piece may not initiate fusion with the King. Two of the rule changes above reverse this. This might be to prevent the King from using fusion to get out of check.

The new rule I'm thinking of adding limits the use of fission for getting out of check. I initially thought of just forbidding fission for getting out of check, but it seems simpler to forbid fission by a piece that is currently attacked. This prevents the two ways fission could be used to get out of check that would tilt the advantage in favor of defense. One is if a royal compound piece is in check, and the player splits off the non-royal component to block the check. The other is if a pinned piece is blocking one check, and it splits off one of its components to block another check. This is more permissive in some ways and more restrictive in some ways than the other condition I thought of. It is more permissive, because it allows a check to be blocked by splitting apart an unpinned piece. It is more restrictive, because it does not allow any attacked piece to split apart.

Its main advantage is that it will require less overhead. In Zillions, I can just add "not-attacked?" to the appropriate code, and in Game Courier, the legal fission moves will all correspond with other legal moves, which eliminates the need to write extra code for calculating possible fission moves. Since that advantage would be lost if I used both conditions, I will just use the simpler condition. So, the rule I'm thinking of adding is that it is illegal to split apart a piece that is attacked.

I am currently in the process of programming a Game Courier preset for Fusion Chess. When I have finished with that, and when I have updated the Zillions file, I'll officially update the rules.

The Zebra+Knight versions of the Hartebeest are bound to 1/4th of the board

This looks like a decent 10x10 variant; it has the basic Chess pieces--with more mobile Pawns-- and well-known Knightriders & XiangQi Cannons.

The King game-winning 'promotion' rule could liven up the endgames without totally changing the game.

However, I am confused as to the logic behind the apparently abitrary initial setup. The Rooks have an open rank (like Grand Chess) which is fine.  But the Horsemen (modified Pawns) are more mobile--but start very close to each other.  So close, in fact, they can't use their forward most moves initially without being captured.   Except the Horsemen on the far ends; they start one rank farther back for no discernable reason. 

The forward pawn lines leave a bunch of space to the rear; considering the vast area there aren't very many other pieces.

Also, the Knights are back a rank from the Horsemen, consequently they cannot move forward as the first move. They are protecting Horsemen, but it seems like there ought to be another way to do this.

Xhess is quite playable, but I'm left with the impression the starting setup could use an overhaul.

This is a really good idea, the only problem being it really needs a custom Chess set.

I'm guessing it would require similar bluffing strategy like Stratego. I can see myself thinking "hummm, that faux Pawn can't be anything valuable, it's too exposed.... unless that's what he wants me to think....or, he could be counting on me to think that's what he wants me to think...."

:-)

This actually has a decent chance of commercial success, in my opinion. It's got 'wow' factor, but close enough to normal Chess to feel familiar.

Great idea.

Today played a game of Rotary with a set of pieces I made myself. It is a very nice game. The rotational element adds a nice layer of tactics. Only thing that feels weird is the promotion rule 

In my opinion, this is not a very good Grand Chess variant.

Grand Chess is built upon two main ideas; getting rid of castling by freeing the Rooks in the back rank, and introducing the two 'missing' compounds to be additional high-value pieces--the Cardinal & Marshall.

Euchess moves the Rooks back and re-introduces castling, and then doubles the number of Cardinals & Marshalls--but, inconsistently, keeps one Queen.

Ignoring the lack of numerical consistency, this is really bad from a playable perspective--the sheer number of power pieces diminished the value of Knights & Bishops significantly.

Euchess is much too top-heavy, power wise, and significantly dimishes the point of the open back row. (Marshalls, with their Knight move, don't need the room to be developed.)

I think there is room for some interesting variants of Grand Chess, but this isn't one of them.

I have done an experiment in an attempt to settle how close the two, almost the same, armies.

The engine used was the latest chessV. The total number of games was 128. Out of which:

Augmented Knight won 31

Extra Pawn won 41

Draws 56

Score: EP 69-59 AN which is around 53% for the winner.