Rated Comments for a Single Item

well, i had been holding off on making comments about contest entries until the judging was done, but since everybody else has started it's obviously not a big deal... <P> this game is a lot of fun and the pieces are neat. i eventually plan to put the teleporter and the bobber in the piececlopedia. i've found that the 12x7 board weakens the B and N about equally, altho of course there is no N in this game, the royal knight is a different piece altogether and on a smaller board is worth much more than a rook. (as a side note, i've found that the 16x8 board in short's doublechess weakens the N and B about equally). <P> i was initially skeptical of the 12x7 board because i've found that boards with odd numbers of rows in games not using shogi pawns are unbalanced because whoever moves first usually has an easier time taking control of the center row and thus gaining an advantage. had short used standard chess pawns this would've been a problem, but i've found that the crab effectively eliminates this problem. <P> one curious aspect of this game is that it is the first (and only) game i've seen where castling is usually a liability rather than a help. this is because castling puts the king in the middle of a stretch of empty squares which are then vulnerable to teleporters (altho the special teleporter rule helps against this, i'm not sure if this rule is implemented in the zrf or not). when i played zillions i lost every game by teleporter attack until the game in which i didn't castle.

This game is quite excellent in the exotic pieces category. A more playable version of Existentialist Chess (itself a deliciously wierd game). <p>I'll hazard a guess about the comparative non-use of 7x12 boards: the non-square board weakens the Bishop (or the diagonal move component of other pieces). Of course the larger than 64 squares board weakens the Knight, but 7x12 may unbalance the values so that the Knight is stronger than the Bishop. Perhaps some designers tried this board and the resulting games didn't feel quite right. <p>By the way, I don't feel that unequal Knights and Bishops are a design flaw (I used them by intention in my own entry), just that it won't 'feel right' to some. <p>For my own part, it just feels natural to start with a square board as a basis and add or subtract squares to get the desired square count.