Kevin Pacey wrote on Mon, Nov 18, 2019 06:57 PM UTC:
Thanks for the reply H.G.; it is encouraging - though I still hope to one day produce more innovative CVs (IMHO).
Team-Mate Chess looks like a great CV for practicing ones' endgame technique.
Regarding your offered concept of 'meta-variants', assuming it can one day be perfectly defined, and broken down into all the already existing examples that are on CVP, it is something that appears to have slipped between the cracks for CVP. Fergus' seminal article (see CVP home page) on what makes for a CV, in the first place, IMHO breaks down various CVs, as they are differentiated from chess itself, into 6 ways of changing chess (or one might say, 6 parameters in doing so), one of which is to combine the other 5 parameters in some fashion. Then there are a number of categories CVP database organizes CVs into, such as Large Board, 3D etc.; note that I'd call 3D or higher dimensional variants a 'meta-variant', but possibly some may dispute this.
Other examples of what I'd personally recognize as meta-variants would be Ultima-style ones (Ultima was the ground-breaking CV for this), as would be variants with some type of drop (on Game Courier 'pockets' are used for storing single pieces, and also used are what I'd call 'sleeves', for storing unlimited numbers of pieces to drop) - shogi was the ground-breaking CV for this concept. Note that Chinese Chess was ground-breaking for at least its use of the then innovative cannon piece, besides having a palace limiting where a K could move to; Chinese Chess, with its use of a palace, possibly is the lead member of a meta-variant category, too.
Regarding shogi-style variants without drops, other than the 'physical' apperance of the board and pieces, I'm not sure what makes them substantially different from chesslike CVs that simply use different leapers & sliders on various board sizes (in terms of being a possible meta-variant), other than there are a lot of asymmetric and/or short-range moving pieces instead, and often a small number of special/powerful pieces that can wipe out a lot of weak enemy units if a breakthrough happens (however, other than for shogi itself, I'm pretty unfamiliar with these various CVs). A similar sort of argument might be made about shatranj-like CVs, perhaps. As an aside, perhaps an otherwise mundane CV that introduces a novel piece (such as in many shatranj variants) might be worthy of being considered ground-breaking, especially if the piece were to prove as iconic as a Chinese Chess cannon.
Thanks for the reply H.G.; it is encouraging - though I still hope to one day produce more innovative CVs (IMHO).
Team-Mate Chess looks like a great CV for practicing ones' endgame technique.
Regarding your offered concept of 'meta-variants', assuming it can one day be perfectly defined, and broken down into all the already existing examples that are on CVP, it is something that appears to have slipped between the cracks for CVP. Fergus' seminal article (see CVP home page) on what makes for a CV, in the first place, IMHO breaks down various CVs, as they are differentiated from chess itself, into 6 ways of changing chess (or one might say, 6 parameters in doing so), one of which is to combine the other 5 parameters in some fashion. Then there are a number of categories CVP database organizes CVs into, such as Large Board, 3D etc.; note that I'd call 3D or higher dimensional variants a 'meta-variant', but possibly some may dispute this.
Other examples of what I'd personally recognize as meta-variants would be Ultima-style ones (Ultima was the ground-breaking CV for this), as would be variants with some type of drop (on Game Courier 'pockets' are used for storing single pieces, and also used are what I'd call 'sleeves', for storing unlimited numbers of pieces to drop) - shogi was the ground-breaking CV for this concept. Note that Chinese Chess was ground-breaking for at least its use of the then innovative cannon piece, besides having a palace limiting where a K could move to; Chinese Chess, with its use of a palace, possibly is the lead member of a meta-variant category, too.
Regarding shogi-style variants without drops, other than the 'physical' apperance of the board and pieces, I'm not sure what makes them substantially different from chesslike CVs that simply use different leapers & sliders on various board sizes (in terms of being a possible meta-variant), other than there are a lot of asymmetric and/or short-range moving pieces instead, and often a small number of special/powerful pieces that can wipe out a lot of weak enemy units if a breakthrough happens (however, other than for shogi itself, I'm pretty unfamiliar with these various CVs). A similar sort of argument might be made about shatranj-like CVs, perhaps. As an aside, perhaps an otherwise mundane CV that introduces a novel piece (such as in many shatranj variants) might be worthy of being considered ground-breaking, especially if the piece were to prove as iconic as a Chinese Chess cannon.
From CVP home page - What is a Chess Variant?:
https://www.chessvariants.com/what.html