Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
The Dev appears to be a lot less vulnerable than two other well known multiple occupancy pieces, Peterson's Cobra and the wall. The rule for capturing the Dev is this: 'Devs can capture devs directly. However the other pieces of the opponent can capture the dev, if all of the four squares that dev is standing on are under threat ...' In the case of the wall and Peterson's Cobra, the entire entity is destroyed if any part of it is attacked without the whole being threatened. So the Dev suffers from weaker movement ability but this is partially compensated by greater invulnerability.
David Howe has written an essay about pieces of differing size - Growing and Shrinking: Playing with the Size of Chess Pieces. The notes to that page reference a few more such pieces.
Mark Hedden should be mentioned here as having made significant contributions to this genre of variants using multiple occupancy pieces (as well as multiple occupancy squares).
I don't know what I was thinking back then, but If I had an option right now I would rename the 'Shogi' piece to 'Cannon' as it should be, and I would change the figure accordingly. Same thing applies to the Turkish Chess variant I created around the same time. We are currently playing this game as: White plays 2 moves with different pieces first, then each side takes turns playing 4 moves all of which has to be with different pieces. This seems to speed up the game considerably.
I am wondering if something could be added in order to allow the mobilization of more than one piece during a turn. Perhaps have a commander unit that mobilizes a bunch of pieces that are near it, like Joe Joyce uses in his Chieftain Chess: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSchieftainchess
It looks awesome, but it seems like the knights are really useless on this board and further damaged by being so far back. I think you should also try to increase your piece diversity.
In corresponding to board's large size, large amount of pieces, and division into 2x2 zones.
Perhaps a piece with the combined movements of the knight and flamingo(1,6 jumper). The flamingo move would allow the piece to be much more mobile on the large board, it might be a good idea to restrict the flamingo move to passive only as this would allow the piece much greater mobility without too greatly increasing its attack capabilities.
19 comments displayed
Permalink to the exact comments currently displayed.