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Comments by CharlesGilman
Reflection teammate. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
The 14x14 board has always struck me as a bit unwieldy for just 64 pieces (hencr my own Fivequarters) - but might benefit from an extra player. A 3-player Reflection Teammate might look like this, where the third army are shown by the inverted White pieces to save characters:
AltOrth Hex Chess. Hexagonal variant using pieces moving only one way along each orthogonal. (11x11, Cells: 91) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]At first I thought that you'd overlooked something, but now I see that I have. I still had too much of an eye to Wellisch analogues, which do indeed confound Camel and Zebra analogues into the Sennight. You're right, in AltOrth it is the Hindsennight that is the Zebra analogue, the Foresennight the Camel one (I even have definitions of these pieces in Man and Beast 20: Far From Square), and the full Sennight specifically a Bison analogue. I will have to correct the page when I have time offline. [note 14th September: I have now done it]
Good to see someone taking up my Ascii Art diagrams for hex Chess!
Stations. Missing description (9x5, Cells: 61) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Ploy. Strategic Game of Maneuver and Capture, 3M Company - 1970. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Any details on the array - where each piece starts and pointing in which initial directions?
Korean Carrera. Missing description (15x10, Cells: 150) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I'm making progress with names for Hopping-radial-component versions of the Marshal/Cardinal/Canvasser/Caliph, but I'm not quite there yet. It occurred to me that names Careerist/Campaigner better suited the Knight/Camel compounds with the Arrow than with their own G/Mc and Wellisch hex analogues, so I changed the latter compounds to Canterer/Caperer to free up Careerist/Campaigner for the Arrow compounds. Careerist even has an echo of Carrera whose name this variant carries. So I now have Cannon+Knight=Marksman, Arrow+Knight=Careerist, and Arrow+Camel=Campaigner, but this still leaves Cannon+Camel. I welcome any thoughts on naming that piece.
It's just struck me as more complicated than I took into account. Logically 3d pieces like the Cavalhopper, Cafilhopper, Leasehopper, Levithopper, and Leprehopper should get distinct names as well - to say nothing ofthe Acehopper and Acmehopper. Do you think I should just concentrate on thinking of a name for the Canvahopper for now and leave the rest for the longer term?
Pawn. Moves straight forward, takes diagonally forwards, and can promote.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Good point, there's no Baskerville Chess page on this site - and there isn't a rules page for Shafran's either, just the Friedlander implentation page.
Perleberger Bridge Chess. Missing description (8x9, Cells: 66) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Or even Stewards, which move one step along any orthogonal without capturing, and capture one step along any diagonal. Why hasn't that piece got its own Piececlopedia page by now?
The alternating of colours is indeed to do with the two Bishop bindings, as each step of the Bishop moves comprises simultaneous steps in two out of forward/backward, left/right, and up/down. In other words the move is rotationally symmetric, so that a series of levels is the equivalent to a series of vertical planes. Now on the 2d board the colouring of the ranks alternates, and the colouring of the files alternates. A 2d plane with a rank or file entirely of white cells followed by one entirely of black cells, and so on, would look very odd, either as a whole board or a single plane of a 3d board. In that context a column of cells all the same colour would also be very odd.
Whale Shogi. Shogi variant. (6x6, Cells: 36) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It struck me when I first saw this variant that theming a Shogi variant on whales was rather tasteless, for the reasons given by george Duke in previous comments. Even looking beyond that I feel that whales, as huge animals that travel still huger distances over the oceans, do not make a particularly good theme for a small variant full of short-range pieces. The game might have been far better received without the whale theme, and all the pieces have other names in other context. The Dolphin, Killer Whale, and White Whale are long-established standard Shogi pieces, and if their Japanese names are not to your taste my Man and Beast 01: Constitutional Characters suggests simpler English names for them. The rest have names in Man and Beast 12: Alternative Fronts and some also have Japanese names in large Shogi variants:
If anyone knows of Japanese names for the other three I'll happily add them to the table.
| Whale Shogi name | Man and Beast name | Japanese name |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Whale | Coppergeneral | Dosho (Copper General) |
| Dolphin | Point | Fuhyo (Foot Soldier) |
| Grey Whale | Hunter | |
| Humpback | Silvercoward | Old Monkey |
| Killer Whale | Chatelaine | Ryuo (Dragon King) |
| Narwhal | Snail | |
| Porpoise | Wazirfiler | |
| White Whale | King | varies between players |
SerPent Chess 50. Pentagonal cells form hexagonal blocks in two ways. (Cells: 50) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Glad that you like it. It occurs to me that these definitions of the orthogonal pieces - and one alternating orthogonal and diagonal moves - could be applied to Daniil Frolov's pentagonal geometry. Here's my analysis of how they move on that board:
Of the pieces actually used here:
* The Rattlesnake always moves steadily left or right - 'half a file' every two ranks when also moving forward or backward, and alternating between two cells of the rank where the move starts and two cells of the one bordering it along a crooked edge.
* The Nadder is a bit of a surprise. It can encircle a hexagon of two cells, as might perhaps be expected, but it can also move directly along a rank.
Of the pieces only mentioned for possible future variants
* The Ambrook can move far further on this board than on the SerPent one. It moves between back-right and front-left, and between back-left and front-right, like the Bend- and Scarp-orthogonal moves of the Ratlesnake in SerPent Chess.
Promethean Chess. Units visiting the home squares of others leave behind duplicates.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]What would you call hte subvariant of Promethean Chess? Antimethean Chess, on the basis that pieces will be introduced 'anti' the camp where it happens? Or better still, how about Epimerthean Chess, after the mythical Prometheus' brother Epimetheus? The brothers' names mean foresigt and hindsight respectively.
Shatranj. The widely played Arabian predecessor of modern chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The issue of Xiang Qi actual strengthens Mohsen's case for not calling the Ferz a 'General', as General is the name generally used for another piece in that game. The Ferz represents a kind of adviser in both games, so why call it something that doesn't mean a kind of adviser? The Shogi analogy doesn't work at all. The names of the King, Rook, and Bishop pieces in European languages are regularly used in the context of FIDE Chess, so it is natural for Europeans to use these names even when playing Shogi - and even devise new European names for the rest of the pieces. My own Chatelaine, Helm, Point, Primate, and Wing are the most comprehensive list of such names. Incidentally one player's King in Shogi is called 'King's general' and the other 'Jewelled general', the latter without specifying a particular kind of jewel. Calling the Ferz a General simply doesn't compare. The Ferz is this context not an piece exotic to players alreadsy familiar with FIDE Chess, bit the precursor of the FIDE Queen. As far as I am aware it was only ever known in Europe either as Ferz or some variant spelling, or by the local names now used by the modern Queen. One small point about real-life bishops: they are certainly not 'Humanistic' in the religious sense, quite the reverse!
Man and Beast Overview and Glossary. Table summarising what piece characteristics Man and Beast articles cover, with glossary of terms used to describe pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Yes, I'm considering an alphabetic list in the new decade. There has been a lot of rethinking of names these last two years, but I'm hoping that I've done the bulk of it now, and once I've cleared out the notes of previous suggestions I could start an alphabetic list with a clearer idea of how many pages it will take.
Korean Carrera. Missing description (15x10, Cells: 150) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I have now finished naming cpmpounds of radial hopper and oblique leaper/stepper as follows:
Tank Cannon Arrow Sling
---------- -------- ---------- ------
Knight | Accountant Marksman Careerist Carian
Camel | Actuary Captain Campaigner Cappadocian
Elf | Eliminator Legate Leister Levantine
I decided not to bother with Gnu compounds. The basic (oblique leaper) versions are listed in Man and Beast 08: Diverse Directions and oblique-stepper versions of some, including Chinese- and Korean-style Marksmen, are mentioned in Man and Beast 13: Straight and Crooked Moving. I have also submitted an update to Ecumenical Eurasian Ninjachess. Directed Alice III
. a 3-board Alice Chess variant.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Larry Smith's suggestion for moving between boards would negate the advantages of going from two to three boards in the first place. The whole point is that Knights can return to the same board in an odd number of moves.
Steward Chess. Kings are able to "crown" pieces, giving them extra moves. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Just such a shame that I took so long to spot this game.
Are there any plans for a rules page for this variant? The only ones that I could find under Spartan in the index were Spartan Chess 28 and Spartan Skaki.
Xiang-qi moving palace and river. Missing description (9x10, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]To say nothing of my own Tardis Taijitu, which doesn't have a moving River but does have... well, see for yourselves.
Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 3). More on the value of Chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'One hypothesis about why the Chancellor does so well is that the R has a weakness that is masked when N is added to form Chancellor. This weakness would be its relative slowness and difficulty of development, and perhaps its lack of forwardness (it has only one forwards direction).'
The fact that the Rook has just the one forward direction does not explain the lack of difference between Rook+Bishop and Rook+Knight as both wopuld gain from the non-Rook move. The more likely factors are (a) that adding the Knight move to a Rook with eight adjoining allies allows it to leap out of that space in a way that a Bishop move does not and (b) just adding the Rook move to a Bishop removes its colourbinding, adding it to a Knight rewmoves colourswitching, which is the Knight's property of always moving to the (not just an) other colour. Both compounds - and for that matter Bishop+Knight - can move to squares both of the same colour and of the opposite one. There are other kind of switching - the Silvergeneral is rankswitching (always moves an odd number of ranks), the Fibnif and Mushroom fileswitching (always move an odd number of files), and the Ferz and Camel both. Can everyone see why pieces that are both rankswitching and fileswitching are colourbound?
Fibnif. Moves one diagonally or makes a forwards or backwards knight jump.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Further to my previous comments, I notice that this piece also always moves an odd number of files and therefore cannot lose the move.
Mushroom. Jumping piece whose destination squares form a mushroom pattern.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]When I had a look at this page it was to make exactly the point of the Mushroom's similarity to the Fibnif. In particular it always moves an odd number of ranks and therefore cannot lose the move, and it also combines the Nightranker (aka Heavenly Horse), which is bound to one in four squares but of mixed colour, with a conventionally colourbound piece to form an unbound piece.
Ecumenical Eurasian Ninjachess. 3d variant on 10 by 5 by 5 board with many new pieces. (5x(5x10), Cells: 250) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Just a clarification regarding the (as yet unposted) updates to this page that I have recently sent: I recently had a rethink of a name that I had not found entirely satisfactory when I realised that therre was a potential better use for that name. Therefore I would ask that the e-mail with my October update is deleted and the November update posted. A Honeycomb Chess update from this February is also still outstanding.
Ideal Values and Practical Values (part 3). More on the value of Chess pieces.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]My first paragraph was a quote from the page itself that I was questioning. I was highlighting what the Rook gains from adding either Bishop or Knight move, and what both the Bishop and the Knight gain from adding the Rook move. Could I also point out that '-boundedness' is not the right term here? Bounded is the past tense of the verb to bound, meaning to jump or leap or hop (in a general sense rather than the specific Chess ones), and as an adjective it means having a boundary so '-boundness' would be more correct - although so is the even briefer '-binding'. There are analogies with other verbs - you can ground an aeroplane and get a grounded aeroplane, but if you grind coffee you get ground coffee - not that I'm offering any.
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In Ecumenical Eurasian Ninjachess I termed the compound of (Chinese) Cannon and (leaping) Knight a Marshhopper, but I can see that if a generic name is to cover different kinds of Knight (as well as Cannon) component that won't do, and no doubt you'd prefer a real word to something derived. Well as you'd have to be a really good shot to fire any kind of gun from a moving horse, how about Marksman? That would still have echoes of the start of Marshal. Now if I could devise real-word names for the Cardi-, Canva-, and Calip-hoppers I could submit an update to EEN - although as my update to Honeycomb Chess has yet to be posted goodness knows when the EEN update would appear!