Comments by benr

I had asked about motivation, and you gave some, and Greg added a good point about bishops really benefiting from the large back space (as opposed to the 1-2 rows in other variants). I do share his concern for the outside knights (and really, all of them to a lesser extent).

I'm publishing this now, but I would suggest adding into the text somewhere about the motivation, and the use of the large rear space benefiting bishops in particular.

I had tried to help with the graphic, but Greg has gone a step further and implemented it, so again thanks to him.

On broader editorial commentary:

I endeavored to clear the editorial backlog a few months ago, and started with 2022 as at that point there were more incomplete or reviewed-without-response entries than ones needing attention. I apologize for not going back further to see some of your older submissions. You've commented on them now which should bring them back to our attention.

Grand Dice Chess I had requested changes on last July and you hadn't resolved them until Fergus pointed them out again (and I think the external link issue remains unaddressed?). We can follow up some more on that page.

I am very glad that your variants see online play! That's no small feat, and I look forward to hearing a little about results. I know that you sent some materials relating to another variant that I haven't had time to review, and I apologize for that too. (Work and family have kept me increasingly busy.)

Back to this page:

I think it's reasonable for Bn to ask about board geometry mostly because of the setup: pawns surrounding and even behind pieces is quite unusual, unless "behind" wraps around. And it's fine that you don't use that geometry, and I don't even think it needs to be mentioned in the page, but that someone commented to ask doesn't surprise me.

Bn's other comments are worth addressing. Note that they are not an editor, but I appreciate all site members contributing to the discussion. I don't think any of the things they've said detract from likelihood of publication, but giving answers like "it is tactical, but that's fun" or "it actually doesn't become too tactical, because XYZ" add context to the game.

I appreciate the Notes on this page. While the interesting aspects of your games may be obvious to you, to a new reader pointing them out is good practice.

I don't mind the introduction as much, although I'll note that this game is much more complex than a large number of variants here. I won't be the editor to approve this though, because I find the theme needlessly offensive (the king wins by forcibly marrying the queen, and then something about gender and political affiliation?). Furthermore, most of the rules are unclear to me.

As to time for editorial review, the average is a number of months, not hours, due primarily to lack of time of the (volunteer!) editors. Submissions that require more editorial work will take longer, while those needing nothing more than a quick review might get published a short time after coming to our attention. You may have noticed a recent problem brought to our attention involving extremely old submissions that had fallen through the cracks (which have still not entirely been addressed; I hope to have a little time this week).

I was going to mention Ice Age and Rubble, but I see Gilman pointed those out years ago. I think a tag for this mechanism would be nice, but I'm not sure what to call it; "blocks" as in this page to me sound more like an uncapturable terrain and "ice" as in Ice Age is too specific to that variant. "Rubble" seems a good fit to me (capturing is "clearing the rubble"), but does anybody else have a better suggestion?

This seems interesting! I'm not sure if it should qualify for the Modest category though: it takes a little more than the minimal explanations I'm used to for that category, and the extra pieces is certainly more than we usually accept for the "usual equipment" supercategory.

The last several pages I've reviewed (starting with submissions from somewhere Jan/Feb 2023?), when I go to the edit (index information) form, the categories are all unchecked. I'm not sure why that would be, and I haven't had time to debug: was there a change in the initial submission scripts that didn't save categories properly, or is there something wrong with the edit form's fetching of them?...

I wanted something specific to capturable, immobile, neutral obstacles, but indeed, each of those adjectives can be left off for a different flavor of object (and probably there are other relevant adjectives to consider). In Eight Stone, I think of the stones as pieces rather than other objects, but I'm not sure if there's a clear line to draw.

an attempt at formatting the old comments that David posted follows. I've just manually added some markdown and rendered them as such to prevent long lines. But since the old ratings and comment pages (I didn't know these existed!) are already as html, I bet we could write a script to convert them into the new database; the authors aren't easily extracted, so we should give an author like "old commenting system" instead, but the signoff would still be in the main text. (Though e.g. the contributors page has been moved; there's an automatic redirect, but the target doesn't even admit comments. So this won't always be straightforward.)

5 Jul 2001 None

Minimal Not-Particularly-New Chess can be turned into Chess with Not-Particularly-Different Armies. Replace the White Queen with an Amazon (Q+N)and the Black Rook on the a-file with a Marshall (R+N). Then switch the Black Queen with the remaining Rook. The setup becomes White: RNBAKCNBR and Black: MNBRKCNBQ, where C=Cardinal (B+N). Pawns promote to R,N,B,A,C,M,Q of the same color. I believe Black has a small material advantage in this game, probably enough to cancel White's advantage of moving first. The rather strange setup of Knights and Bishops goes back to the original version of Chancellor Chess (Ben Foster, 1889). Back in 1999 I invented Paulowich's Amazon Chess on the 8x8 board. See: http://www.chessvariants.com/java/variants/pamazon.html for a Pixelpusher applet.

25 Jun 2001 None

A new solution to the unguarded Pawn has been added as a subvariant, where the Unicorn's leap is considered one step diagonally, followed by one step orthogonally outward, and opposing pieces on the diagonal portion are captured, while friendly ones are leapt over. This is perhaps a bit hokey, but gets the job done. This Guarding Unicorns subvariant has been added to the ZRF, along with a Designer's Choice subvariant combining the Guarding Unicorns and the King's Pawn is a Berolina Pawn subvariants.

PBA

4 Jun 2001 None

Is sticking the NB on the end of the Paulowich lineup too concentrating? It could be, I guess. It means that as soon as you develop those pieces, that end of your array will be naked.

Yes, I got to like the idea of the Berolina P in the middle of the 9-wide board more and more as I thought about it after posting. It should work for all odd-numbered widths.

gnohmon

1 Jun 2001 None

No Mad Elephants in this game, this is supposed to be a restrained variant. Really. Well, mostly. But don't worry, there are lots of Elephants in a project in progress.

I'm not sure about the Minimal NPN Paulowich Chess array -- is putting the Queen and Cardinal/Archbishop right next to each other in the corner kind of concentrating the heavy pieces a bit?

Making the center Pawn a Berolina Pawn . . . Hm. That's an interesting idea. I think I'll add it as a subvariant, and to the ZRF and play around with it a bit.

1 Jun 2001 Good

and add an Archbishop at the right, oops.

gnohmon

1 Jun 2001 Good

I like the use of the Jester, whose niftiness was the redeeming grace for the poor guy who got so roundly blasted for his tone. Of course, the Jester could be some other piece (an alfil which can become an angry pachyderm?)

If you start with the Paulowich lineup (CNBRKBNCQ) (C == Chancellor) and add an Archbishop at the left, you get Minimal NPN Paulowich Chess. This pleases because there is, like Tutti-Frutti Chess, one of each.

I would like the center Pawn to be a Berolina Pawn. In front of the K, its move exposes; from the center, its move decentralizes; the choice of moving right or left may be critical.

gnohmon

1 Jun 2001 None

Peter says,"Many of designers of these games are concerned with amount of draws that occur in FIDE Chess, and the degree to which memorized openings can dominate the game." I notice that Drawless Chess simply outlaws draws. Has anyone tried explicitly outlawing known openings? (Say, give each player an encyclopedia of known chess openings. If a player duplicates one of those openings, the opponent may require those moves to be undone. Or, specify that each player only use openings from a small predetermined menu)

1 Jun 2001 None

David, in fact my name choice for this variant was influenced by "Chess on a Longer Board with a Few Pieces Added" -- it has a sort of cool, slightly ironic sound that appeals to me.

PBA

1 Jun 2001 Good

This is weird: a couple of days ago, I came up with a variant that was exactly the same as your 'Minimal Not-Particularly-New Chess'!

Anyway, I like your use of the Unicorn piece to solve the Bishops being on the same color problem. Another, more radical solution would be to replace the Unicorn with a Bishop, and allow Bishops a non-capturing Wazir move for their first move. Then the player could decide if they want their Bishops to be on the same color squares, and all pawns would be covered.

D. Howe

PS. I like the name you chose. Where you influenced by my "Chess on a Longer Board with a Few Pieces Added"? :)

There seems to be some inconsistency, or at least something that is very confusing. When I go to a page of one of the variants mentioned here as a link, this displays a black 'attention box' at the top mentioning it is on our list of 'featured games'. When I click the link that box refers to, I get to a page which appears to be an index page with an alphabetical list of (presumably) 'featured games'. Most of the variants mentioned in that list are also labeled there as 'recognized'.

Indeed, the link in the attention box is just the mainquery with listprimary=1. "Primary" is just a flag on an item in the database, and I'm not sure we've always used it consistently; they show up at the top of search results lists, and so have been Recognized variants but also just archetypical games (of the presumably searched category), and a few in that list I don't know why they're marked as such at all. There is a separate flag for Recognized variants; is there one for Featured variants (I don't recall and can't look right now), or should there be?

BTW, there appears an attention box on that page [Duck Chess] that says it is written by its inventor, but this is not true. I don't know what triggered this.

That is triggered by having Author and Inventor the same personid. When a member submission is made, both fields are filled with the submitter, and an editor needs to change the Inventor if that assumption is incorrect. I've done so for Duck Chess (adding a Person listing for Tim Paulden in the process).

This item appears in the review queue, but clicking the link takes me to the 404 page. I assume there's something wrong with the redirect rules (for semantic URLs), but I'm not as familiar with those and digging into it will take some time, and I'm putting the little time I have now into clearing the review queue starting from where I last left off, March.

Fergus or Greg, if you read this and can work out the issue, that'd be great; otherwise, I'll try to remember and squirrel away some time to look myself later.

I think every game, but especially one with such a small change as this, should include some discussion of motivation. Why replace the queens with champions? How does that affect the game?

Have you tested this for balance against the other armies?

(Folks familiar with post-Betza CWDA armies: how do we index these?...)

I'd suggest to stick to one name for white's superpiece. I don't think "& be placed" is helpful in the description of that piece, nor including rook and bishop when it already moves as queen. Draw occurs if checkmate is impossible, but it's always possible for white if it still has its superpiece (?), and without it the game will already end in 5 turns?...

Do you have any sense of piece values here?

I added Jean-Louis as the second author earlier this week, so I believe you should be able to use the site scripts to edit it?

I think I remember the same game as H.G., and I would guess I saw it on the subreddit. Unfortunately that appears to be one that went private in the protest.

Before I do, can I suggest different phrasing?

White has no knights or bishops, but their queen is amazon plus a hit-and-run capture of adjacent pieces.

The two kings cannot reach the farthest rank simultaneously. Do you mean that one king achieving that doesn't win if the opponent can do the same in the next move?

You should remove the strikethrough; either leave the statement in, or link to the wikipedia article on the game, or (ideally) submit Dobutsu as a new game through the forms (we'll have to change the inventor after you submit) and then reference it here.

Drat, I guess member submitted pages don't work with the second author field like I assumed. I might be able to adjust that in the code, but we'd need to talk about whether that could be problematic (for starters, what happens if two authors try to edit at nearly the same time).

In the meantime, I (or H.G.) could swap you and H.G. as first and second authors, if he's fine with that. Or you could send him the requested changes like he suggested earlier.