Check out Atomic Chess, our featured variant for November, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Jason L. wrote on Mon, Mar 5, 2012 07:51 PM UTC:
Omega Chess has 2 interesting new pieces that fit together well tactically
with the original pieces as well as each other. That is its strong point.

The Champion turns out to be the much stronger piece compared to the Wizard
which loses value as the game goes on. The Champion turns out to be one of
the strongest pieces at the end of the game, but its a bit dull to use at
the start like the knight which needs an extra move to attack.

While the 10x10 board makes the Wizard an interesting piece to use, Omega
Chess also suffers from not having enough tension between pawns and
fighting for control of squares as compared to variants that maintain the
same distance between the pawns.

Having more space between the pawns (2 rows) leads to more complex
situations, but having that much space also makes the game a little boring
when pieces are just setting up with apparently no reason for doing so.

If pawns are the soul of chess as Philidor said, then Omega Chess pawns are
not at the soul of the game. The pawns simply don't push away key pieces
often enough creating a space advantage for one player who is moving its
pieces in the right order. So while extra space may seem like a good idea,
it hurts the tactical considerations of pawn move that normal Chess has.

I believe Omega Chess is a step in the right direction in terms of the
evolution of Chess, but its unlikely that a game without enough tension
between pawns and a fight for control of the center will gain that much
popularity among the general population.

The fact that certain options rules in Omega Chess Advanced like temporal
knight have been suggested which gives the knight more range suggests that
the original setup of the pieces is not quite ideal.

The knight and the champion just aren't exciting enough soon enough. With
rooks, bishops, and the queen becoming even more powerful, the short range
jumping pieces need to be in better positions to create more interesting
interaction between sliding and jumping pieces. The wizard is also a little
far away from the action. Even after moving to its general development
square, it still doesn't seem to be that much closer to doing something
interesting except along the right or left flank.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Omega Chess

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.