Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Actually, representation is everything. For example, look at my game 'Square and hex on same board' - http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSsquareandhexon
or at this (zzo38) A. Black's comment about 1-dimensional games - http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25177

But i'm going to post another petagonal variant now, wich is more different from hexagonal variants, each 'square' have 5 orthogonally-adjecent 'squares'.

John, you're right that modifying the board that way gives an extra rear rank board location for each side to place a third bishop, and, being 3 pentagons per hexagon, this also gives a 45 position board, fitting the contest theme. I have 2 objections to that, however, The first is aesthetic. The board will be a parallelogram, with corner angles of 60 and 120. It doesn't look right, and it's annoying to play at an angle like that - you want to grab the board [right off the screen] and straighten it out. The second objection is concerned with playability. 

Take a look at both of the boards. The center row of one is 3 hexes - 9 pentagons - across. The other is 4 hexes, and 12 playable spots in the middle of the board. The 3 extra spots in the center on Graeme's board are the one that was lost going from 46 to 45, and the two that the extra elephants occupy, now in the back rows. Does this make much of a difference?

How many pawns does it take to make a solid wall completely across the board? In Graeme's game, in the setup, the 6 pawns cover the 3 hex board 'row' they're on, occupying 2 of the 3 pentagons in each hexagon. To do the same in the middle of Graeme's, you'd need 8 pawns, which the game doesn't have. The middle of Graeme's board cannot be clogged by pawns. On the 45 position board, it only takes 5 pawns to clog [form an unbroken line from side to side] the board. There are 6 pawns in the game. 

In general, especially with all other things being equal, I believe that the narrower the front, the easier it is to jam it up with pieces and kill zones, so the more drawish it will be. Further, Graeme's board is very roughly circular [at least in intent], giving maximum room for maneuver in the center of the board. This game won the contest because it 'plays big'. It feels like the 64 square game, even though it's on a much smaller board. It also doesn't feel crowded, thought the starting piece density is ~60%. Narrowing the board from Graeme's 6-8 pentagons down to 5 pentagons, losing one spot and adding two pieces would likely create a clog in the middle of the board, in my opinion.

Sam Trenholme wrote:
'Would you be open to me modifying your Zillions' file ...'

Please feel free to modify the file as you wish.

I think Game Courier only supports square or hex boards though it may be possible to upload a custom graphic.

Would you be open to me modifying your Zillions' file to have, in the variant pop-down-list, some ideas suggested here:

• Free pawn promotion
• An opening setup where each side gets three elephants
• Both of the above ideas

- Sam

Speaking of which, is there any interest in my inventing a variant using an alternate tessellation. I have an idea that has been bouncing around my head for over a decade which I should make a variant out of, but only if people would be interested in looking at it.

- Sam

I like this game very much, but I would not have limited the pawn promotion
so much had I created it. The first thing I would do if I were
transliterating Chaturanga/Shatranj to a quasi-pentagonal board would be
to keep the basic pawn promotion rule from the original game intact
instead of discarding it altogether and then add the piece that starts on
or directly in front of that cell to the promotion options. In the event
that a Pawn landed where the opponent's Adviser/Counselor started, it
would be able to promote to any piece other than the king. That gripe
aside, the game is a very good quasi-pentagonal version of chess. However,
there is no rating between Good and Excellent and I could not really give
an Excellent rating the game is not completely faithful to its historical
original with regards to Pawn promotion.
P.S. I am referring to the board as quasi-pentagonal because a true
pentagonal board is a tessellation of pentagons that does not involve
pushing small groups of them together into shapes other than pentagons and
I did not call it hexagonal as that would imply that it was nothing more
than a hexagonal grid.

Joe,
just sent you an email.

Cheers
Graeme

Graeme, sorry for contacting you this way, but I've had some computer issues recently, and I currently cannot send emails, though I can receive them.

Do you have board templates for this game and your other contest entries? If you do, would you please email them to me [see my person info onsite], as I'm lazy enough [or too pressed for time right now, if you prefer] not to want to make the boards tonight or tomorrow morning, for purposes of judging your entries. Jeremy and I hope to look at them this weekend, as we've already started work on the entries. We got together a bit last weekend and looked at 2 games [not yours], and plan to get together after this weekend at least once more in January to continue the difficult work of playing games to see which ones are best; rough, but somebody's gotta do it. If you don't, no big problem. By next month, we can make the boards, and look at your stuff then. Either way, thanks for your attention to this. Joe