Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.


[ Help | Earliest Comments | Latest Comments ]
[ List All Subjects of Discussion | Create New Subject of Discussion ]
[ List Earliest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]

Single Comment

Universal Chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Sam Trenholme wrote on Tue, Oct 6, 2009 01:32 AM UTC:
OK, some pawns.

FIDE pawn: Moves forward, captures diagonally forward
Shogi pawn: Moves forward, captures forward
Berolina pawn: Moves diagonally forward, captures forward
Beroshogi pawn: Moves diagonally forward, captures diagonally forward

If you want five more pawns, we can have the following fairy pawns:

Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures forward.
Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures diagonally forward.
Moves forward and diagonally forward, captures forward and diagonally forward.
Moves forward, captures forward and diagonally forward
Moves diagonally forward, captures forward and diagonally forward

OK, is that not enough types of pawns. We can add Winther’s “Scorpion Pawn” movement: Moves but doesn’t capture one square forward and two squares to the left, and one square forward and two squares to the right:

. . . . .
* . . . *
. . # . . 
. . . . .
. . . . .
Here ‘#’ is the pawn and ‘*’ is the squares the Scorpion move allows the pawn to move to.

This gives us 18 pawn types. If that’s not enough, we can add a move I call a “caltrop” move, which is the other two forward knight moves to a pawn:

. * . * .
. . . . .
. . # . . 
. . . . .
. . . . .
This gives us 36 pawn types...but the pawns are getting pretty powerful at this point. I start worrying about White having an unfair advantage when the pawns get too powerful...

ï»żï»ż