Comments by MichaelNelson

Roberto's points are well taken. I'm not even sure King, Diagonal
Bypasser, and three Eaglets can do the job. I't fairly easy for the lone
King to escape by stalemate.

The Eaglet is nearly usless in the endgame, By comparison, King, Diagonal
Bypasser, and FIDE Pawn is an easy win by promotion.

The strategic lesson is to get rid of your Eaglets early--promote as many
as possible, force exchanges with enemy pices (it is especilly useful to
use Eaglets to kill Tower fragments).

Philodor was so right -- the Pawn is the soul of Chess. Any game with FIDE
pawns will fell chesslike to a degree, no matter how far out the outher
pieces are. A change to Berolina pawns leaves the Bishops and Rooks
feeling role reversed, but still feels fairly chesslike.  But the Eaglet
is something very diffeernt indeed with its promotion rule (An Eaglet
which promotes on the eighth rank would have a more chesslike feel).

Promote early and often!

Antoine raises a good point.  Consider it done. Rule 2 is amended to read:
'If a player's pocket is empty, the player may remove any of his pieces
(except his King) from the board and put it in his pocket as a move. White
may not use the pocket for the first move.'

I will also submit a corrected ZRF when I am able.

I hav submitted the corrections to the editors. It is a good change in that
reducing White's opening advantage is always a good thing.

However, the original rules do not give White a win.  Black can maintain
equality by symmetrical play. The early loss of one Rook on each side is a
bit of a flaw, though.

In the revised rules, White is safe from the Nightrider attack if he opens
Pawn d2-d4 or Pawn e2-e4. This covers one fork point and he has the tempo
to cover the other if Black mutates a Rook to Nightrider.  Since these are
reasonable opening moves anyway, diffusing the Nightrider threat costs
White little or nothing--this makes for a very balanced game.

I believe that mate with King, Bishop and Knight vs lone King can take up
to 49 moves, which is the reason for the 50-move rule. IIRC, computer
studies of more complex positions have shown  mates requiring over 200
moves--which might or might not transgress the fifty move rule, as any
capture or pawn move resets the clock.  But in any case, the line has to
be drawn somewhere and some wins (if arbitrary length games are allowed)
will be draws under an x-move rule.

I believe the 50-move limit should be increased for a larger board, but
reduced for more powerful pieces (for the board size).  The technical way
would be to calculate the average crowded board mobitity of each piece
(using Betza's method), then add up these values to get an approximation
of the power on the board. Compare the ratio of this power to the number
of squares to the ratio of the FIDE army (about 64, depending on the magic
number) to 64 squares = about 1.  

The formula is movelimit = 50 times board size divided by total army
mobility.  For FIDE Chess this is 50 * 64 / 64 = 50.

To examples for your duodecimal game:

1. Total army mobility = 90   50 * 144 / 90 = 80
2. Total army mobility = 200  50 * 144 / 200 = 36

You can probably guesstimate accurately enough without actually doing the
calculations.

Any kind of multi-variant tournament or single-variant tournament would be
of interest to me. More than one could feasibly be in play at once. Game
courrier tends to encourage fast play, so this opens more options.


For scoring, there is no way to determine a fair score differential for
Black.  FIDE is the only variant where a deecnt guess of the size of
White's advantage is available, and even that no doubt varies by rating.

Not all variants even favor the player who moves first--my own Pocket
Mutation Chess slightly favors Black under the current rules.

I like Charles' thinking on this game also.  Whatever the inventor's
intent, I like the idea of the third thru sixth ranks all being water so
that you can't get to the enemy back ranks without using rafts.

Moves from one land square to another must be legal, as otherwise the King
is immobile.

It should be legal to give or avoid check, mate, or stalemate by moving a
raft.

The web page states that the Chameleon can check the King from an adjacent
square and this is correct per Abbott's rules for Ultima in 'Abbott's
New Card Games'.  He states that a Chameleon may capture a piece if it
mimics it's move in direction and distance. So a pawn can only be
captured by a Rook move and a King can only be checked from an adjacent
square.

Leaping a Long Leaper does not invalidate the mimic of another piece. This
seems illogical at first glance but really is logical.  The idea is that
making a capture of one piece does not prevent the capture of others. If
the Chameleon had made a Rook move away from a Withdrawer that sandwiched
a Pawn, both captures would be allowed.  Abbott believed that leaping a
Long Leaper should not preclude other captures.

The comments about the pieces in Supremo Superchess have me thinking about
cannon pieces generally and how they might be used in CV's. Rook+Pao
(never mind Queen+Leo) are much too powerful for an otherwise FIDE-like
game. But imagine these power pieces up against say the Reaper or Combine
from Tripinch Chess. Sounds more interesting?

Also consider divergent cannon pieces: Rook+Vao and Bishop+Pao. For these
I would use the Korean cannon moves--the RpB must leap to move diagonally
as well as to capture. These should be interesting pieces in a
variant--starting off at about Cardinal value, declining to little more
than Rook and Bishop in the endgame. Thes would be interesting with other
pieces that gain power in the endgame.

Any thoughts about a cannon Nightrider?  (It needs a big board!)

Peter, 

Sorry about that typo--I know the correct name of your fine game, but my
fingers don't work so well sometimes.

As for no draws by agreement, the rest of the rules by design make it
impossible for a game played to a conclusion to be drawn. My feeling is
that the players cannot agree on an impossible result, any more than two
players of FIDE Chess are able to agree to split the point 3/4 - 1/4.

My reason for a drawless game is personal one: playtesting and analysis
indicate draws would be extremely rare using checkmate and King to the
eighth rank as win conditions. I simply dislike the idea of a draw rate of
say 1/2%. 

The fifty move rule is arbitrary, but will never be invoked by skilled
players: the player with the won position can win quicker than that.

There are two advantages provided by castling:

1. The King is safer near the corner behind a wall of pawns.

2. Brings the Rook towards the center where it can get into the action
more easily.

King and Rook move normally on subequent turns. 

There is no such move as 'uncastle', but some people use this term to
describe a series of Rook and King moves that restore the position of Rook
and King before castling.