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Knavish Chess. Variant using square-board analogues to 6-way hex-board Dabbabas. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Michael Nelson wrote on Wed, Jul 6, 2011 04:52 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
For the new pieces. The Knave and Debtor have useful moves and a never before used (on a square board) set of bindings. Most original.

Jörg Knappen wrote on Tue, Jul 5, 2011 02:05 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I am updating the rating to excellent, because seeing the elegance of the knave and debtor pieces is obviously a non-trivial task. In fact, Abdul-Rahman Sibahi and Joe Joyce discussed the pieces (without naming them) here briefly

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/listcomments.php?itemid=MPcomplementarit

but they didn't see that they are exceptional. Perhaps it needs some hexagonal thinking to see it.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Thu, Jun 9, 2011 01:16 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Yeah i like the pieces too. I'll be releasing something to showcase over 200 fairy pieces (not a game), i'll add these 2 pieces.
I don't mind the 10x10 board, and as far as it making most pieces too slow, i think that really is a matter for personal taste. I do think though the piece density might be a bit heavy.

Jörg Knappen wrote on Mon, Jun 6, 2011 09:07 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
First, an excellent to the 2 new pieces, the knave and debtor. The two are nice findings and worth the consideration of other chess variant authors as well.

It is not an excellent for the whole game, because I think board design, piece mix and rule setup don't work as well as they could. For most pieces, 10x10 is already a too large board making them slow. The standard chess bishop and queen aren't good counterparts to knave and debtor. The standard chess rules on stalemate also don't accomodate knaves and debtors well: How many of them do you need to force the checkmate of a lone king?

Knave and debtor have a strong 'shatranjian' feel; probably a very good variant is taking standard shatranj and replacing the knights with knaves and the alfils with debtors. Note that the original shatranj has only 2 alfils (where 8 are needed to cover the whole board); in the same manner shatranj with knaves and debtors has only two of each species. In shatranj, stalemate and lone king are wins, which reduces the number of draws.

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