Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)
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Armies of Faith 2: Later Antiquity. The second in a series of 3d variants themed on various religions of history. (5x(10x10), Cells: 245) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Hardly understandable but so interesting.
Sloppy Slippers. An army consisting of slip-pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Cool, thanks;) noting that Queen and Oracle are pretty equal.
The Amazon Army. One player has an Amazon (a queen with knights move) and handicapped rooks.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Dice Landing Chess. Few pieces in play at the opening. Roll a dice to get other pieces joining the game. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] The Forward FIDEs. A team for Chess with Different Armies where pieces can advancer easier than retreat.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Muje (Untitled). Members-Only Janggi + Chess + Drop rule of Shogi. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Mischia. A small 6x6 chess variant that plays like normal chess. (6x6, Cells: 36) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Hello.
I think it's a very nice take on the mini-chess, that feels different from Diana, Mallett, or Los Alamos variants. I believe that the closest relative of this variant is 5x6 chess, with the same feel of all possibilities of orthodox chess, but faster and less complex. This variant is definitely going to take its place in my game library. Thank you for sharing!
Ladder Chess. Chess variant on a `skewed' board with 40 squares. (Cells: 40) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating] Shahrady. 
Chess with "passes". (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]What a fine concept. A new way of using reserves that makes for a different game from Chess but has a good Chess-like feel. The adjacent kings rule sets a trap for the unwary. Hold that Queen in reserve and when the opponent moves his king next to yours, you have 9 less points to count.
Rules question: does the requirement to evade check have priority over ending the game by moving next to the enemy king? I would think yes, but I'm not certain from the rules on this page.
I'd love to program this game for Zillions, but I have no idea how to implement the win condition for adjacent kings.
Storm the Ivory Tower. A Smess adaptation of Chinese Chess. (9x10, Cells: 90) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I hope there are no errors in the piece movement.
Edit: They're now centered properly, Fuddyduddy image is now used instead of Dumbo
Bull's eye. Upgrading of the possibilities to move within the Bull's eye to make the game more dynamic. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This gave me an idea for an army for CwDA.
Bullseye Buddies Banzai Chess. Friendly pieces can be pushed and pushed pieces can bounce. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]That is amazing! Thanks! How can I implement it inside the main body of the page? Just thinking about those who may access it from their smartphone, which are very unlikely to check out the comment section!
I tried to recreate the same Interactive Diagram with the Betza notation you used but I got some troubles with the pieces' image... How do I get to know their filenames?
Imaginary Chess. Members-Only Extremely complex chess. Chess masters become powerless. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Thunderstruck Server Chess. {This game seems broken…}. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Big thanks, but (sorry, was unspecified directly but also not mentioned in page, I’ve done so recently) Axemen haven’t en passant.
And still, can you adapt Hexmaster’s XBetza to match 8x10 board without using so much useless code describing very long legdefs, to let me make GC preset with it, please?
Chess. The rules of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The more I play and (try to) design decent chess variants, the more I appreciate the elegance of the popular game.
Shahrady. Chess with "passes". (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Крутая игра, однако.
Also, one of the features of this chess variant should be noted: the peace-loving nature of the Kings. They are not aggressive and can easily be checkmated with one piece, for example, a Queen.
Как в Atomic’е или моём Fluidity. | Like in Atomic and my own Fluidity Chess.
Centurion Chess. Centurions replace the Kings. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I really like this concept. To me it seems like a great Chess-Arimaa hybrid. I don't know whether you consciously considered that, but the Centurions function much like the Rabbits in Arimaa, whereby you win by getting a Rabbit to the other side, or by capturing all of the opponent's Rabbits, with the last Rabbit effectively becoming royal (although it is not defined that way, losing it means losing the game).
I have often thought about how to bring about a synthesis of Chess and Arimaa, but have never been able to come up with a concept that satisfies me. YOU have done so, however. Thanks!
Berolina Chess. Different moving pawns. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Berolina Chess 960
Checkers Chess. Pieces move initially only forwards. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Checkers Chess 960
Spirit Chess. Members-Only Game with a. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since this comment is for a page that has not been published yet, you must be signed in to read it.
Chu Shogi. Historic Japanese favorite, featuring a multi-capturing Lion. (12x12, Cells: 144) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
A. M. DeWitt wrote on Thu, May 23 12:14 PM EDT:Excellent ★★★★★When I first saw this game, I didn't think much of it, since I was more focused on larger Shogi variants, especially Tenjiku Shogi. However, now I have a few games against Jocly under my belt, and wow, this game completely blew me away. It is an absolute joy to play, despite its size and complexity (which melts away after a couple games). However, it is not completely flawless.
Some rules, such as the King Baring rule (Uses Shatranj version, K+G vs. K is mentioned in historical sources) and repetition rules (borrowed from Xiangqi) that are currently played by are modern contaminations from other games and/or are warped versions of things mentioned in the historical documents, but I am willing to include these two rules, as they help with decisiveness without being redundant or overly complicated.
However, I am not willing to play by the "Okazaki" rule, and I would never recommend using it, which allows recapture of a Lion after another Lion has just been captured, if said Lion is unprotected. There is no evidence that it was a part of the historical game, and it kind of defeats the purpose of the rule against indirect Lion trading, so why did someone think it would be a good idea to have this? All it does is add confusion and increases the chance of a simplified game, detracting from the playerr experience.
It is also not clear whether a Lion taking a Pawn/Go Between and then a Lion is allowed if the enemy Lion is undefended after taking the Pawn. Both sides have evidence arguing for them (the hidden protector example for yes, a tsumeshogi in Dr. Eric Silverman's Chu Shogi Part II article, explained in the An interesting quirk in the Lion-trading rules section, for no). Personally, I prefer that is is allowed, since no recapture is possible after the move, and there is no specific mention of this situation in the historic rules.
However, despite these problems, Chu Shogi is still easily among the best games of its kind. If you like Chess variants, you should give it a try.
Addendum - An attempt at a drops-playable Chu Shogi variant
Chu Seireigi is an attempt to combine elements of Chu Shogi with the ruleset of modern Shogi. It also has the benefit of not needing any special rules to preserve its quality, fixing all the problems with the modern "innovations" for Chu Shogi that I mentioned above. Players are disincentivized from trading off the most powerful pieces in many cases because they would just go into the player's hands, making them even more dangerous. The repetition rule is simply that of Shogi (draw, except perpetual check loses), and the drops make King-baring extremely rare. However, this comes with the unfortunate downside of having to remove all the multi-move abilities from the game, as otherwise the balancing would be thrown off.
Macadamia Shogi. Pieces promote on capture to multi-capturing monsters. (13x13, Cells: 169) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Macadamia Shogi is, by a hefty margin, my favourite Shogi variant of the larger boards to date. Maka Dai Dai was previously the most enjoyable to me, but 400 moves later I'm stil in the middle game and it feels more like committing to a project than playing a game. Macadamia Shogi really helps alleviate this without detracting too much from the main points of appeal of Maka Dai Dai in my opinion. My heartfelt thanks to H. G. Muller for assembling this variant!
I also root for his success with the C localserver project if it still considered in the pipeline.
Admittedly, the main purpose for my comment to this page though would actually be to raise awareness--if it weren't already known--that the kanji character piece set for the js board on this website has sadly seemed to have broken partially, as a few of the pieces may be missing links now, or at least otherwise aren't loading on multiple browsers I've tested with. I was hoping that these could be potentially restored, as they were a much preferred visual setting.
Anyway, thanks again for all the hard work you've done for chess variants and the like, and I wish you good luck with the future endeavours!!
Grolman Chess. Game with sequential movement of pieces of the same color. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]25 comments displayed
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