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Abstract Chess
. Pieces are represented by stacks of different heights.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is a real neat idea, which is why I'm giving it an excellent rating. However, I find myself wondering how it would play in practice. There seems to me that there would be a certain tendency for the Pawn line to get sucked into the back line at the start, producing a mess of attack routes.
I think many people would be tempted by the strategy Peter mentions, of the 'pawns' getting combined into the back rank pieces early on to build more powerful pieces. The approach I would try in my first game, however, would be to combine pairs of pawns into knights, resulting in having a total of six knights. There's even some logic in demotion: you start with a rook and two pawns, and end with three knights; or a queen and four pawns, and end with five knights. If you carry this idea to its conclusion, you get two bishops, and thirteen knights. In the endgame, you can recombine into whatever more powerful pieces you need. Of course, all this conversion carries a cost in tempo.
Great idea. Its simple and elegant, yet add the mutability of pieces that many game designers have sought. The idea of simplifying the rules of Chess is also intriguing. It should be quite playable.
Why not have 7 be the limit, and make a stack of 7 be a King, instead of having a royal stone? (Then you only have one type of piece, making the game much, er, abstracter, as well as adding more strategies!)
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