Check out Grant Acedrex, our featured variant for April, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Albert Lee. This game is a favorite of its inventor.

Kingsmen

Kingsmen is played on a 9x9 board. The arrangement of the pieces is almost the same as in Bishops Chess, but with 9 Pawns on the third rank.

Setup

Pieces

All the pieces move as in Orthodox Chess, except for the Pawn, which cannot double advance on its first move and hence also without the en passant ability.

Promotion

All pieces except the King promote in the last three ranks, similar to Shogi.

A promoted piece can move one square in any direction like the King in addition to its original moves:

     
Pawn → Crowned Pawn
Bishop → Crowned Bishop
Knight → Crowned Knight
Rook → Crowned Rook

Rules

Castling

The castling move in Kingsmen is the same as orthodox chess, with the final positions of the King and Rook resembling Queenside castling on either side.

Notes

Kingsmen is an attempt to create a fun chess variant with perfect symmetry. All pawns are protected at the beginning, some by more than one piece. The promotion rules are inspired by Shogi, where all minor pieces promote to a Gold General. In Kingsmen, all pieces gain the King's moveset upon promotion. This is the source of the name Kingsmen.

How to play using readily available board and pieces:

You will need:

Place the chess pieces on the shogi board as in the diagram above. When a regular chess piece is promoted, mount it on a flat checker piece. You can secure them using commercially available modeling clay.

Play with the ChessCraft app:

Kingsmen 

(Sage=Crowned Pawn, Monk=Crowned Bishop, Centaur=Crowned Knight, Admiral=Crowned Rook)

 

Kingsmen Variants:

Mini Kingsmen

3x9 board with the strong pieces and King crammed into a 3x3 "castle":

Regular pieces gain the King's moveset upon reaching the last three ranks as in Kingsmen. The King can castle with either Rook by simpy swapping positions (usual castling rules apply).

 

Kingsmen VS Dark Horde

Chess with Different Armies variant on a 9x9 board with the regular Kingsmen army against a Dark Horde army consisting of:

All non-royal Dark Horde pieces gain the Knight's moveset upon reaching the last three ranks, in parallel with the promotion rules of Kingsmen.


This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.

By Albert Lee.

Last revised by Albert Lee.


Web page created: 2021-06-12. Web page last updated: 2021-06-28

Revisions of MSkingsmen