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Comments by CharlesGilman
Yo[n]o Shogi. 4-player Shogi variant with all 8 kinds of piece (fewer of some) on a standard Shogi board. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Having had a look at the game again, I suspect that taking over a Checkmated player's pieces in a game that has not only reintroduction of captured pieces but so high a starting piece density might be going too far down Shogi's no-endgame path.
Bland Chess. Chess with no diagonal moves. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The idea of using dice to vary what moves are available would be most interesting applied to a 4-player variant with one player using the Pawn, one the Yeoman (Berolina Pawn), one the Point (Foot Soldier), and one the Cross (Stone General). The players with the divergent pieces would have the obvious advantage unrestricted, but who'd gain most with the dice added?
Halflings. Pieces that can travel at most half their usual distance.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I can also answer the anonymous question about Halfling Knights. The Knight move is coprime, that is, its coordinates have no common factor except 1 (also true of Camel, Zebra, Giraffe, Antelope moves). Therefore no move is a fraction of it and half of it gets rounded back up to the whole move.
Missing Ox Chess. 4 distinguishable FIDE sets represent pieces starting with 24 different letters. (16x16, Cells: 256) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thank you for pointing that out. I wish that more people would point out errors like that. I have corrected it.
Quadd Shogi. Shogi with 4 squares for each one space in normal Shogi. (18x18, Cells: 324) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'Moves 4 or 2 forward, followed by 2 or 1 sideways'. Can either be followed by either (Helm+Tusk+Blotch+Calf) or must the number of ranks moved forward be twice the number of files sideways (Helm+Calf only). If the latter, it might be better expressed as 'Moves 4 forward followed by 2 sideways, or 2 forward followed by 1 sideways'.
Wazir. 
Moves one square orthogonally.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]He probably means the kind of games that my schoolfriends and I played in the eighties, in which each player had control of a large group of districts represented by cells that might be regularly tesselated but might be of irregular shape and might even be subject to dividing into smaller cells by the building of e.g. canals through them. In these games every move would be either a single step across a border or (in more complex versions where railways could be laid) several such steps along the line. Orthogonal directions are the only ones carrying through to these games from Chess.
Knightmate. Win by mating the knight. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]If this piece is stronger (on 8x8) than the Knight or the Bishop that's perhaps another reason for calling it a Prince rather than a Commoner, but I digress. Certainly it has the 'major piece' quality of being able to Checkmate with the assistance of the same player's King. The implication of this interesting in that any piece of whose move the Prince's is a subset is also a major piece. Thus promoting a Bishop in Shogi is a big deal indeed. Note that my illustration of how the Harlequin in Commedia dell'Arte Chess is a major piece uses its one-step moves rather than any of its longer-range odd-step moves.
Mitosis Chess. Each captured major piece in this game returns to the board as the two or three pieces it originally consisted of. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Interesting that Daniil Frolov's reaction to the potential 8x8 game that he describes is that it is unoriginal. My own not-that-old Overkill Chess uses that array, but without all the 'returning-in-bits' aspect. Before posting it I made a check that no other game used the same array, but I did not think to check for similar ideas on larger boards.
There's been much talk of 'cloud computing' lately, but articles here and here have made me come up with the idea of a 'cloud chessboard'. The idea is that a player could, under circumstances to be decided, create a new cell or remove an empty one. A cell can have 3 to 6 corners, and 3 to 6 cells can meet at a corner. A cell would be created replacing a corner between existing cells, and destroyed by merging replacement with a corner between surrounding cells. The starting point would be a FIDE array with most pieces enhanced by addition of hex moves for when hex cells appear - Duchess, Stalwart, Governor, Queen, Emperor, Governor, Stalwart, Duchess. Rather than have FO pieces, when 'forward' might become hard to define, the front rank would be Stewardwaiters - making noncapturing moves one cell along any orthogonal and captures along any of either kind of diagonal. Linepieces always move through a cell's opposite edges/corners, and can move through an odd-sided cell only if they have both relevant kinds of move.
So that's the basics. The questions are: Is this worth pursuing further? What should allow a cell to be created? What should allow a cell to be destroyed? Is promotion still required given the power of the Stewardwaiter? Might cloud-board games based on any other array be worth considering?
Battle of titans. Missing description (3x(9x5), Cells: 135) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Am I right in thinking that 'forward' means out of one's own part of the board and further into either of the others, so that when any Shogi general crosses between the FIDE and XQ areas that move is considered a 'backward' one and the 'forward' direction(s) switch from further into one to further into the other? If so, it would be helpful to clarify that in the rules.
Wildeursaian Qi. Variant on 10 by 10 board combining ideas of several existing variants. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]You did read about Wazirs being further promotable on reaching an end rank, didn't you?
Ajax Chess. All pieces have can play one square in any direction, the Mastodon leaper complements the Knight. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I've recently noticed that this older variant also adds noncapturing moves to pieces, although the move added is quite a different one.
By 'moving freely' in my previous comment here, I meant an Ajax move that would allow Generals and Ferzes to leave and re-enter their Fortress - or for the matter the enemy one - by a noncapturing move, and Elephants to cross the River by a one-step move. Sorry for taking so long to explain.
You know how the Queen and Gnu and Cardinal and Canvasser are worth more than the sum of their parts because the unbound component unbinds the bound one? Well that led me to wonder about compounds whose diagonal or Camelwise move remains restricted to squares of a single colour. There could be a Queen that can move as a pale-square Bishop but not a dark-square one. Three questions strike me about such pieces: 1 Are they closer to being worth the sum of their parts? For example, is the restricted Queen described above worth a Rook plus a Bishop, or is it worth less because it can find itself on squares where it is temporarily only a Rook? How does it compare in strength to an Ajax or Ajaxrider Rook? 2 Are they worth cataloguing in my Man and Beast series? There are already two such pieces in use, the Korean pieces that are partway from General/Wazir to King/Prince, but they are something of a special case as they are further restricted to not leaving the Fortress. Can anyone see themselves using such pieces more widely? 3 If they are worth cataloguing, has anyone any ideas about how they should be named? I did have a brief idea for square-cell pieces, but thought better of it as I would prefer something more widely applicable. Should all pieces moving along the same subset of diagonals have the same prefix(es) or suffix(es), or should they be named according to whether the subset includes their own starting cell? What about the three colours of the hex board, and the overlapping Bishop and Unicorn bindings on a cubic board? What would you call a Governor restricted to Bishop moves including its starting cell but Unicorn ones not including it? How would you distinguish between a Waffle whose Elephant moves are confined to an entire Bishop binding, and to a mere Elephant one?
Pentagonal chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The link to Hexagonal Chess does not work because of the colon. In any case, a better link to generic Hex variants would be: http://www.chessvariants.org/index/mainquery.php?type=Any&category=Hexagonal&orderby=LinkText&displayauthor=1&displayinventor=1&usethisheading=Hexagonal+Chess+Variants
I started by stating in the first paragraph of the intro the wish that it should be marked as a 'piece article' page, but phased them out as I edited the pages further. Hope that this helps.
Ultima. Game where each type of piece has a different capturing ability. Also called Baroque. (8x8, Cells: 64) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In my piece article Man and Beast 21: Lords High Everything-Else I extend the Chameleon concept to 'Naive-Chameleon' pieces which capture an enemy by the enemy's noncapturing move (and can capture each other) and 'Grand-Chameleon' pieces which capture like Orphans (i.e., like any piece threatening them, not just the one being captured). Both kinds of piece have a fixed noncapturing move, which unless otherwise stated is a Queen move on square-cell boards and a Rook move on hex ones.
Pentagonal chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I devised a variant on a board of 50 pentagons which took a different approach from this one, but have yet to post it as I was waiting for the 50-cell contest. Do people think I should go ahead and post it soon regardless of contests, or is there any chance of the contests continuing?
My goodness, the tesselation in the last comment is the one that I'm using (though with some extra cells and rather more missing to give a more 'face-to-face' look). Well I've started writing a page of hex variants and I've got a cubic one planned for after that, so perhaps I'd better fast-track my 50-pentagon variant to next after that one.
The page where I mix square and hex cells is called, straightforwardly enough, Square versus Hex.
Root-fifty leaper. makes a (5,5)-jump or an (7,1)-jump.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Edited because I had miread your question as 'What is the square root of fifty?' and answered that. It is the square root of 50 because the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides of a right-angled triangle equals the square of the longer sides. The squares of the 5s are both 25, summing to 50, and the squares of 7 and 1 are 49 and 1, also summing to 50.
Mega Doom Chess Project. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'Captures as gold, moves as silver; Captures as silver, moves as gold;' My Silversteward and Goldsteward follow these patterns, and their riders add the suffix -ess.
'Are reverse gold and silver (and their divergent versions) worth?' The reversed pieces I term Goldcoward and Silvercoward. I don't think I've covered divergent ones yet.
'Capture as dragon king moves as dragon horse; Moves as dragon king, captures as dragon horse; Forward-only versions of dragon and divergent dragon pieces.' Now these I haven't covered yet. I have similar pieces with the augmentation to the Bishop being by a Dabbaba move - Pawned Chatelaine, Yeomanned Inquisitor - but not by a Wazir one. When I devised simpler names for the dragon pieces - Chatelaine and Primate - I did so with extrapolation in mind, to forward-only as well as to 3d, so I termed the FO versions Caryatid and Abbot. As the Goldsteward and Silversteard Pawn one move and Yeoman the other, I suppose I should also think of Chatelaine/Primate and Caryatid/Abbot divergent pieces. Likewise in 3d Vicereine/Besieger, Virago/Ram, Moderator/Heretic, Elder/Xorn, Baroness/Regent, Heiress/Commissioner, Diarch/Usurper, Presumptive/Assassin, Dowager/Pope, and Devotee/Nuncio ones.
Notchess. A family of games with Chess and Chess-Variant pieces but no King. () [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Well Notchess 80 is derived from Yang Qi, which has neither. I could probably devise a Notchess based on Wildeurasian Qi, which has both those pieces as well as the Gnu. That one would have an odd number of files.
Because I needed something to focus it on. Otherwise it would just be a range of random variants, and harder for readers to relate to.
Korean Carrera. Missing description (15x10, Cells: 150) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'Ninja - compound of cannon and horse.' Why, when I have used the 2:2:1 cubic leaper so widely under this name? Variants using the latter include Ecumenical Eurasian Ninjachess, Leapale, Nichtschach, Paired Piece Tunnelchess, Sachsenschach, Springernichtschach, and Weltschach. Most use it in conjunction with the Knight and the 2:1:1 Sexton. Triaxial Qi uses Stepping versions of all three.
Mini four player chess. Missing description (8x8, Cells: 48) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]The option of promotion to Queen opens up the further option of win by marriage, as per Bachelor Chess.
Triaxial Qi. A 3d variant based on Xiang Qi but with triaxial steppers. (5x(5x10), Cells: 250) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]It is and I've fixed it. Thanks for that. Keep the corrections coming!
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