Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Bob Greenwade wrote on Sat, Jul 29, 2023 02:37 PM UTC:

12. Thunder. This is the best I could figure out from the Thunderer in Charles Gilman's Man and Beast articles, which is listed as a square-board piece even though one of the pieces that combine for it (the Tradewind) is one of his cubic/hex-prism pieces. I'm mainly guessing at his intent here, but I do find it interesting.

The Thunder, to start with, has all the moves of the Queen and Nightrider. It also can leap two spaces orthogonally or diagonally, and then may turn 45 degrees to move outward like a Bishop or Rook (respectively).

This is an extraordinarily powerful piece; see how it utterly dominates even this 15x15 board? Only the threat of capture can restrain it once it's in the field.

One way to restrain it would be to make it a promotion-only piece, and given that yesterday's Zip is also called Lightning, it seems like a logical candidate for what it could promote from. (In fact, it was putting up the Zip that led me to do this one today.)

I actually built this originally just as a private joke, and hadn't even intended to put it on Thingiverse until I saw what the move looked like; I put it there more for that than anything else. Despite its being overwhelmingly powerful, the move diagram has an interesting symmetry.

It also occurred to me that one could use this as the starting point for a chess variant with the potential for being truly (ahem) marvelous.


Edit Form

Comment on the page Bob Greenwade

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.