[ List Latest Comments Only For Pages | Games | Rated Pages | Rated Games | Subjects of Discussion ]
Rated Comments for a Single Item
Well, let us start calling poor 'poor'. Even though taking exception to 'Kasparov-Fisher's, or 'Fisher-Kasparov's, indelicacy at times, as a game to play Dragon Chess(tm) adds nothing to the art, zilch. That is because restricted Queen is bad Chess piece. That goes for all CVs too that use one- or two-step, or one- or two- or three-step, movers in radial lines. The reason they are all poor pieces, whether Rook-like, Bishop-like, or Queen-like, is that there is no rationale not to go to one-, two- three- and four-stepping. As a pretext for making 10x10 board, however, this Dragon Chess(tm) makes sense for them and their own interest.
This is unbelievable! This is completely uncreative! The guy or guys who invented this not only don't care about chess, they surely don't know the least about chess (if you don't believe me, read what they've put on their website)! The bigger board is a blant copy of dozens of other variants: because there are two added pieces, we need two more files and since we want a squared board, we need also two more ranks! Boring and done thousands of times before!!! Another novelty: we need a pawn in front of the new pieces!!! Wow, that's new!!! And the two 3x4 squares at the sides: what the hell are they good for? There is no justification for them! They are just there because! There is not a real need for them to be there!!! The pawn can't go there and the board is already 100 squares big! Who needs the extra 24 squares that don't have a real purpose!!! It's obvious that they wanted to create a patented chess set that they could commercialize! And they wanted to add a dragon! The pieces look really cool and so do the graphics also. But beside that, there is nothing. They just took chess and added a piece that moves like a weak queen. A piece they really wanted to have the form of a dragon so they could use cool graphics and could commercialize! Really sad. I know much better and creative variants.
When I looked at this game, I was very pleased by the appearance of the pieces, and, although I, like Fergus, find Staunton pieces easier to use, on account of their familiarity, I think I will purchase a Dragon Chess set anyway, just to have the pieces at my disposal to facilitate making physical representations of other Chess variants that I do enjoy. I was not particularly impressed by the game itself, however. Unlike Jianying, however, I do not think it needs to be a radical deviation to be good or to be successful. Gothic Chess is no radical deviation and yet it seems plenty popular, as CVs go. And I'm not sure that throwing out the opening book, while that is of concern to more experienced players like us, even entered into their thinking. My criticism of the game is more related to the specific implementation. The main 10x10 board... ok, good, clearly that board has been tested in many successful games such as Grand Chess. But why add the extra battlefields on the side? It is not as though the setup or rules encourages any pieces to move there; I see them remaining largely unused. And a pawn would not want to go there (only possible by capture) as it would then have to capture again to get out of there, which it would have to do in order to promote. But, conversely, the fact that a pawn would not want to go there is not enough incentive for other pieces to go there. You would still move a pawn into such an area in order to capture a piece, even if it means giving up on promoting that pawn. The board doesn't seem to be well thought-out. It also looks like the text of the rules wasn't thought out at all. For example, they list material values for the pieces, but they left the values of the Chess pieces as-is, and added the Dragon in at a value of 4 pawns. For starters, on such a large board, the Bishop and Knight are obviously not of the same value any more. Beyond that, all the standard chess pieces are valued incorrectly. Should be more like: pawn=1, knight=2.5, bishop=4, dragon=5, rook=6, queen=10-12. But I'll probably still buy a set just for the pieces. I wish I had acquired an Omega Chess set before they all ran out. Anyone have an Omega set they want to sell?!?
The lack of innovation of this commercial game suprises, one would have thought that they do their due diligence and seek out something more innovative, as very much on displayed here. Most of the games on these pages easily out flanks games such as this. Here's the challenge: What is the most minimal change of the rules that one can propose that would make this game much more innovative? Suggestions?
4 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.