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Vierschach. 19th Century 4-player game where allies start off at right angles to each other. (14x14, Cells: 160) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ralf Gering wrote on Sun, Aug 11, 2002 11:46 AM UTC:Poor ★
The description contains several errors: The right corner of White A
('South') must be a dark square. The book written by Theodor Müller-Alfeld
contains a rather long explanation why this MUST be so. The position of
the Queens and Kings must THEN be exchanged so that the Queens are on the
square of their own color.

Ralf

Ralf Gering wrote on Wed, Aug 7, 2002 09:15 AM UTC:Poor ★
Dear Hans,

your e-mail server doesn't work. My e-mail was sent back to me. Now my
comments to 'Vierschach':

Vierschach was invented by the famous German doctor Dr. G. Arthur Lutze
(1813-1870). He invented a health coffee, founded the Lutze clinic in
Koethen (Sachsen-Anhalt) and was one of the greatest homeopath.He wrote a
poem called 'Der Drachenfels' (a mountain near the former capital of
Western Germany, Bonn. The Drachenfels is also called the highest mountain
of the Netherlands, because so many Dutch people climb it.)which was set
to music by Johann Karl Gottfied Loewe (1796-1869)in 1838.  
A photo of Dr. Lutze:
http://www.kulturstaetten-koethen.de/tourismus/images/lutze_1.jpg

The game is described in: Heinz Machatscheck. Zug um Zug: Die Zauberwelt
der Brettspiele. Verlag Neues Leben Berlin. 6th edition, 1990. (pp.
65-66)

BTW you have the book in your collection, Hans (your description of
Russian Fortress Chess is based on it.)

I have rated the site as 'poor' because when I try to print it, your site
crashes the workstation of the Institute for Data Processing at Tuebingen
University. There must be a major bug in the html of your page.

Ralf

Jared wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 07:13 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
What if, to be able to destinguish between the allied teams, you gave them
totally different armies?  I don't know how you could do this, but it
would make it much more interesting!  Perhaps you could give the 'A' teams
standard armies, and the 'B' teams a Different Armies team.

On another note, you could implement this with Zillions by specifying the
two teams as two different players, making the two teams per player easily
distinguishable, and setting up a double-move script.  I don't know how
well Zillions would play, though.

--Jared

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 03:09 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
This is the same unusual placement of partners and order of play that is used by Parker Bros. Grand Camelot, published in 1932. I had thought until now that it was unique in that respect. I have never played Vierschach, but I have played Grand Camelot, and it is a good way to play a partnership game. Peter Aronson also made a variant of his Chaturanga 4-84 with the same seating positions and turn order.

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