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ximeracak.. A leaper-heavy fantasy variant designed for play with a standard set. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Earl wrote on Wed, Feb 2, 2011 08:14 PM UTC:
Put up yer Dukes!

arrangeCVs wrote on Wed, Feb 2, 2011 06:01 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I hope there are not any mistakes below, without any revision possible.
Okay no one answered, so with attention to detail let's give it a go.
Notice (1) First, every Pawn is not covered, which becomes a superficial
issue in other cvs.  (2) Only Wizard is colourbound, like regular-chess
Bishop. (3) Overby's ximeracak makes one appreciate Wizard and Champion as
pretty creative match-up, that get lost on the too-large Omega chessboard.
__________ (4) Shi Ji finds Champion and General can corner-mate General,
but does not that already work with Kings instead of Generals too? For
instance also both short-range Man alone and (Wazir+Dabbabah) are enough.
_______ (5) Pegasus' leg of Giraffe(1,4) is indeed poor because 'c1-d5'
forces decision whether to trade Pegasi right away. Any (x,4) leg is hard
to work right into only 8-deep, whatever file started on. I think Glenn
realizes that and did not get around to correcting it.  ________  (6) The
four piece-types go to mutually exclusive squares, the drawing shows. To
keep that concept, I think making Pegasus (Zebra+Tripper-3,3) might solve
everything, except the Pawn question of the last comment this week. That
Pegasus as (Z+3,3) becomes like 4 arrowheads, and they set off well with
Champion, whose footprint looks like the bow to those arrowheads.  That
change of Pegasus would be a subvariant with Overby's permission.
________________________
(7) Since deciding ximeracak's king should be general, the temptation is
also to offset by doing something with Pawns. What Overby adds to Pawn is
jazzy for effect, but better not strengthen Pawn that much here.  (By the
way, Overby likes to use *general* and *sergeant* here because he works for
the national usa Boy Scouts, 100 years old, and having their not completely
different ranks-concept as some military.) Actually, full-fledged Berolina
might be best of all with their so mobile files against the 4 leaper-types,
in further improved subvariant of 'x'. Since Berolina can exit two ways,
each moderate leaper then get lots of choices for even more of what
Aronson's comment calls ''fluidity'' of this cv become genre by
considering its variants. (8) Over-all, that becomes, if inventor Overby
should approve, ''Berolina Ximeracak with Arrowhead and original
ximeracak promotion rules.'' 
(9) Otherwise, Overby's enhancement of Pawn looks okay too, maybe without
the two-step.  The main need is to get rid of the reach four-up of Pegasus
in the Giraffe 1,4.  (10)  Finally, (0,3) omitted still seems right because
of Pawns' general forwardness -- kind of 'a Cannon and Rook
uglification' principle generalized. /// What else would be important to
discuss about ximeracak? Whole point is to promote new ideas and not leave
them unanswered because they are hard. Good luck.

Shi Ji wrote on Mon, Jan 31, 2011 05:30 PM UTC:
Yesterday I made a serious mistake. Since the royal piece is not a king in chess but a gold general, a singgle major piece with a general can perform a checkmate in endgames. But it must be that the gold general on a higher rank and the green general on a lower rank.

I still have questions on Pegasus. Maybe this piece is so strong that gives gold advantage. The inventor set it on c1 in the opening. Because if set as queen in chess and general as king, Gold can checkmate by 1. Pf4++. Even the opening setup is gold Pegasus on c1, the shortest game could be 1.Pf3 Pc6 2. Pb4++. So if gold moves 1. Pf3, green has to defend b4 square. So it'sa tactic game right in the opening. But I believe a game with depth has possibilities of positional play.

I doubt if Pegasus is good to use. It leaps such a long space. Maybe it's hard to adjust its position. Has anyone approved that it can travel to every square on an 8x8 board?

Is it necessary to set all major pieces leapers? I suggest Pegasus could be a slider, which slides orthogonally to any direction and diagonally forward. This slider can checkmate green even if green general is on a higher rank.

Another question is why design Sergeant this way? Why not just use pawns in f.i.d.e. chess? Is there any necessity?

Shi Ji wrote on Sun, Jan 30, 2011 03:59 PM UTC:
Any single major piece with a king can't perform a checkmate in endgame. I'm afraid this is too drawish.

John Smith wrote on Sun, Nov 2, 2008 12:15 AM UTC:
It would be nice to have a piece that moves 3, 4, or 5 squares orthogonally to make a nice diamond shape with the major pieces' combined movement diagram.

John Lawson wrote on Thu, Mar 13, 2003 08:53 PM UTC:
Finally inclination and opportunity coincided and I tracked down a link for
Lojban orthography:
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/brochure/phonol.html#idxphonology
Incidentally, Lojban is related to Loglan.
The upshot is, if you pronounce ximeracak. with the 'x' as the 'ch'
sound in the Scottish 'loch', 'c' as the English digraph 'ch', and
the 'i' as an English 'long e', and use natural English pronunciation
for the rest, you will be close.  Finish up by ending the 'k' sound with
a glottal stop (like the 'tt' in Brooklynese 'bottle') instead of the
normal English aspiration.  Then remember to stress the next-to-last 
syllable, and you've got it.  Think 'khee-mer-RAH-chahk'.

John Lawson wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 09:35 PM UTC:
Hey! I was gonna do that and now you've spoiled it!

💡📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 08:52 PM UTC:
Ow.  Zillions did that to me once in a test game.  :)  Like the fool's mate
in orthochess, once you've seen it you avoid it in the future.

Thanks for the compliment.  'Beautifully treacherous' almost sounds like
ad copy.

Michael Nelson wrote on Sun, Jan 26, 2003 08:22 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I have discoverd the Fool's mate for ximeracak.  by having a longer variant
of it sprung on me in a game.

1.   Wizard d1-c4     X
2.   Wizard c4-b5 mate


Where X is any move that does not vacate a square adjacent to the General
or defend b5.

A beautifully treacherous game indeed.

💡📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Fri, Aug 23, 2002 12:19 AM UTC:
I'll play around with it both ways some time in the next week, as soon as I
get a free hour or so to sling Zillions code.  (Scanning and cascades are
still annoying.)  :)  At least the game already has a
promote-only-to-what-is-gone rule, so the issue of multiple Pegasi cannot
arise.

I kind of like the image of the heroic Pegasus flying to the aid of the
beseiged General.  It fits the theme somehow.

Peter Aronson wrote on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 08:20 PM UTC:
I wonder if this proposed Pegasus/General swap rule ought require the 
Pegasus to be defending the King.  Thus, you could first drive off the 
Pegasus, then mate.

Jianying Ji wrote on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 07:33 PM UTC:
mating is not necessarily more difficult but endgame strategies are
dramatically impacted. What I think will happen is a sequence of checks 
that manuavers the general in to a square such that a final fork of the
pegasus and the general gives mate. To win a player must somehow 
construct the sequence, and not to lose by preventing them. Also it 
definitely impacts promotion choice and skew it toward pegasus for 
defense, or toward wizard/champion (maybe) for offence

💡📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 02:49 AM UTC:
I may have to try this. The rule idea has some interesting ramifications. I wonder, though, if it won't make it too hard to give mate in a number of positions. The impact on promotion decisions is also worth study.

Jianying Ji wrote on Thu, Aug 22, 2002 01:10 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
It might be interesting to try the following modest variant of ximeracak:

0: all rules as Ximeracak except as noted below
1: when the general is under check it can switch with
   the pegasus, provided of course the pegusus is not
   also attacked.

This simple modification will increase the pegasus's streategic value
which will make people be more careful before putting pegasus in harm's
way, and keep it in the game for the end game. In fact it should have
the overall effect of decreasing the apeal of captures in the game.

💡📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Fri, Aug 16, 2002 09:54 PM UTC:
The Pegasi do sometimes get exchanged early, and I too miss them when they
go.  They're even more interesting on a big board.  The game for which I
invented them is on an 11 rank board, just as Macdonald's Wizard and
Champion both rose to prominence on a board 12 'ranks' deep.

Peter Aronson wrote on Fri, Aug 16, 2002 06:25 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
Nicely fluidly weird. Normally leapers greater than maybe (3,0) or (2,1) don't work on a board this size, but with <strong>everything</strong> but the King/General and Pawns/Sergeants leaping, this isn't the usual problem. <p> One thing I noticed is that it is very common for Pegasi to be exchanged, which is unfortunate as they are interesting pieces. It might be nice to treat them as like Lions in Chu Shogi (or Golems in Golem Chess, which borrowed the idea from Chu Shogi) and not let them be exchanged easily.

Jared wrote on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 09:25 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
This reminds me of a Modest Variant I came up with once:

Rooks --> Champions
Bishops --> Wizards
Knights --> Princes (Knight + 0/3 Leaper)
Queens --> A Piece Without A Name (Zebra + 3/3 leaper)

(K and P stay the same)

Each of these three pieces has exactly 12 moves it can make, and they all
compliment each other nicely.

--Jared

Nuno Cruz wrote on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 08:36 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
What an interessing game! One that I will probably try to convince my friends to play with! :-)

💡📝Glenn Overby II wrote on Mon, Aug 12, 2002 08:26 PM UTC:
I'm glad the descriptions and diagram helped you. Thanks for the feedback.

Jianying Ji wrote on Sun, Aug 11, 2002 02:47 AM UTC:
how cool, I was just wondering about leapers for a variant I was 
designing. this is perfect for it. and the diagram of the where all
the leaper go is great, a very good exposition

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