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Neutral Subject Chess. Most pieces start neutral, and players compete to recruit them. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Michael Nelson wrote on Sun, Apr 9, 2006 08:24 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Let me try restating the rule and Charles can either affirm I am correct,
or he might think of yet another way to express the rule if I am wrong.

1. For the purpose of applying the recruitment rules, we pretend that a
neutral piece can capture a non-neutral piece.
2. After moving a piece, the player who just moved may recruit any piece
which is attacking a piece owned by either White or Black. 
3. If rule two applies to multiple pieces, they can all be recruited.
4. Recruitment is applied recursively, so if a neutral piece which is not
attacking a White or Black piece is doing so after a recruitment, that
piece can be recruited also.

Charles, is recruitment mandatory or is it legal for a player not to make
a recruitment he is entitled to, either by intent or oversight?

By the way, I think this is a fine game concept that deserves more
exploration--I expect there are many ways to apply it in different game
settings.

George Duke wrote on Fri, Apr 27, 2018 06:08 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Parton made Neutral King in 1953, where player has own orthodox pieces but the King is co-owned and

yet has to be checkmated. Simple and elegant. Most of Gilman's CVs are hurt by overcomplications in

piece-moves, odd board sizes, too many special rules, or attempt hybridizing Eastern chesses with forced

templates. Once in a while he strikes paydirt such as AltOrthHex idea of splitting up the hexagonal Rook

into two, though nobody has really done anything with that either.

Neutral Subject realizes that Parton's Mutator has wider applicability. Here player only has King and Queen to begin. Neutral pieces get moved and then assigned to one side or the other. The criterion to assign is applied at end of each turn according to hypothetical attack of each 'Neutral' on any piece already assigned. Who wouldn't want more pieces rather than fewer? Many other CVs could be made in this genre of the pieces on board not belonging to either army initially.

Charles' novel CV invention, expanding on Parton, gets somewhat awkward explanation in his essay. Like Aronson and Howe with Rococo, great idea is not followed up with clear summary fully disambiguating.

Still in all, there could be other ways to set up the bazaar of recruitment to build the forces in subvariants and new CVs this type of possible breakthrough Mutator.

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