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Asteryx Chess. Hexagonal chess played on an asterisk-shaped board. (Cells: 43) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
dtj wrote on Thu, Jun 5, 2003 01:10 PM UTC:
Fergus, thanks for taking some time to comment on the game, and your view
on the queen's overpowerfulness would seem to chime with that of nicholas
- so let me try to address those concerns once again. 

In designing the game (which of course involves a form of custodian rather
than replacement capture - see rules) i was well aware that the geometry
of the board allows any token (including the king) on certain cells (in
fact 12 of the 43) to be capturable by a  single piece (not just a queen).
In fact, the king has deliberately been positioned initially so that it
actually needs to be moved twice  to reach a cell less vulnerable than its
starting cell.  One is constantly having to balance the imperative of 
'developing' one's king (and one's rooks!), with defending other
tokens, and of course launching one's own attacks and probes.  The game,
as i hoped to suggest in my notes, is quite unlike chess in its very
lively play - more like a cross between chess and draughts in feel.

Now i could have made the king more powerful, say by also giving it the
glinski bishop single step move - but i suspected that then the king would
prove too hard to checkmate especially as the number of tokens per side
diminished. I found that the moves i selected for the various tokens
(albeit giving queen and bishop moves more powerful than in chess) created
a lively and enjoyable game that was easy to learn and play and could also
provide checkmate with limited resources on both sides. 

It could well be that there are other move combinations that work better
together, but i have yet to find them. Thanks for your interest and
comment - dtj.