Comments by nelk114

Fergus asked some time ago whether a piece covering the same squares as a zB but alternating between the move's arms (for which he suggested the name ‘Helical Bishop’ on account of the path's resemblance to a DNA‐style Double Helix) had already been invented. It seems we can now answer that in the affirmative: it's mentioned twice on this page, as the Zigzag Bishop. Betza also posits what Gilman would go on to call a Bruegel (t[Wzt[FAA]]; for which I initially mistook Fergus' description), as well as a piece (the t[FzDD]) ‘dual’ (in the Gilman sense) to the Harvestman of Seenschach which seems to go curiously unnamed in M&B.

He [i.e. the king] is royal, but can't be captured by displacement, he simply must avoid check.

Presumably this precludes Qe8; as I understand it, the proposed defense thus prevent capture of the defending piece on e7 (which could also be a knight) by having the square after it not be vacant (it's occupied by the king) whilst blocking the check (which is “as in chess”) as a Chess rook would be unable to capture the king.

Iow one can't ‘displacement‐capture the king’ (for the purposes of calculating Check) and capture anything else in the same move (except with a knight).

This whole checking‐differently‐from‐capture business is rather confusing

The ‘castling out of check’ case suggests to me another definition again: if we consider the restriction on castling out of check to be an extension of the restriction on moving through check — in effect that the K can be captured en‐passant on its starting square, upon having decided to move — then check for castling purposes would always be calculated with an effetive K move for the joker. Iow the move of the J, and whether it gives check, is defined at ‘touch move’ time.

For the case of determining checkmate or stalemate, that would mean that the J would give check with the intersection of the moves of all pieces able to move pseudo‐legally. As such KJK would still lead to checkmate, but with most other combinations of material the J would not give passive check at all. But in e.g. KJKQ the J would give passive check as a K. With more complex pieces (esp. those that can be blocked — particularly the Vulture of the large Apothecary games) this would potentially be position dependent. (And I think it's a little subtler yet in the hypothetical case of a game with both a joker and two royals with disjoint movesets)

Ofc this is probably horribly inefficient to program, provided it's even deemed to make sense (I like it for castling‐out‐of‐check restrictions, but I'm ambivalent between it and Option 2 (by Greg's numbering) for check‐/stalemate — it avoids the surprising(?) behaviour of HG's example where the J checks as a piece that's no longer on‐board, in exchange for arguably slightly greater opaciity of definition), so take it or leave it :‌)

This is very true, though a bit out of scope for M&B; while 3D boards seemingly fascinated him, Gilman apparently had no interest whatsoëver in 4D games as they are too far removed from human experience

Fwiw it's not only the Rumbaba (and ofc the Dicorn, Rumchick, extra Generals, ⁊c) that turns up on a Tesseract‐cell board: some of the (in 2‐ and 3D) hex‐specific leapers like the (1,1,1,2) Sennight (or perhaps it's a Foal? here with 64 directions) do too, though I think the likes of the (1,1,2,2) leaper might've needed a new name

The KAD goes back at least as far as the Pasha of Paulovits' game, and also appears as a Mastodon in Mats Winter's games and as Joe Joyce's Jumping General (How's that for alliteration?(!) )

The Queen burns like a Fire Demon here

Did you mean including passive burning as well? Only active burning is working for me (though Adam's Tenjiku diagram seems to implement passive burning too so clearly it's implementable as you described)

Playing about with this diagram I did seem to have run into some strange bugs:

• Passive burning works correctly, but not when the promotion dialogue turns up. E.g. Rook General g4xg13 from the opening setup survives even though it lands next to the Fire Demon. If I promote it then move it next to the FD again it's burned as expected
• Under certain conditions (it seems to be contingent on whether it's a piece's first move), promotion seems to become corrupted: it gives me the promotion dialogue, but doesn't promote it regardless of which option I select. Subsequent moves allowing promotion (into/within/out of the promo zone) likewise ask but don't react, and the move seems to permute surrounding pieces in an unpredictable way, often with the same highlighting as for burn victims, though sometimes on squares with pieces still (or newly) on them. I think this is contingent on whether it's a piece's first move:
  • 1. RGg4xg13=GG works (besides the above bug allowing it to survive)
  • 1. Pg5–4 Pg12–g11 2. RGg4xg13 similarly works
  • 1. Pg5–4 Pg12–g11 2. RGg4–g5 Pg11–g10 3. RGg4xg13 triggers the bug

The two bugs together also mean that a piece subject to the second bug can never be passively burned within the promotion zone

the knights cannot reach the centermost square

Afaict the second part of the N's move is optional here, so it may make one‐step orthogonal moves and thus access the central square if needed. So it's more a Rhino than a traditional Knight

Replacement capture should work normally

Can confirm that it does for most pieces, and indeed FD's burn after most captures, but FDxFD seems to suppress burning fsr

The same idea was also recently posted to the CV subreddit, where it recieved a bit of discussion; in particular it was noted that the game is practically guaranteed to reach the endgame

A minor(?) bug in the board‐size pseudo‐tags: the numbers are interpreted in two different orders. To wit:

• The Capablanca Chess page has a pseudo‐tag for a “10×8” Board; clicking this link leads to a query page for games with 10 ranks and 8 files
• Conversely, selecting any game in that list (e.g. the first of its Game Pages alphabetically, Gilman's Avon) shows that its board‐size pseudo‐tag is “8×10”, a link leading to the 8‐rank/10‐file query where e.g. Capa can be found

Minor at least in the sense of a presumably trivial fix ;‌)

While browsing I came across another couple of games with ski‐sliders: Quang Trung Chess has a ski‐rook from its third edition (except the fourth, where it's a ski‐queen); the comments on the 4th‐ed. page here also reveal Snark Hunt's Boojum, also a ski‐queen (and its Snark, which moves as either king or boojum but demotes to the latter when moving as such)

dozenal is a neologism in this context. On looking up the word, it describes numbers in base 12, which is not what is meant

‘Decimal’ is also often used to describe 10×10 variants, even though outwith chess‐variant circles it also seems to refer only to base‐10 numbers. Imo in this context the extension to ‘dozenal’ is reasonably clear

Speaking of neologisms, might it be worth crediting Charles Gilman for the names of the Gold/Silver Pashtuns? They are defined in Long‐Nosed Generals and used in Pashtun Shogi (Though the Silver pashtun predates those names as the Great Elephant of White Elephant Chess). The names of the Riders may or may not also be original to Gilman (M&B 4).

Idk about the other pieces; Marquis seems to be from King's Scirocco, and Caliph is common to both Gilman and John William Brown (in Meta‐Chess); The likes of Snaketongue and Wizard have credits given already

It's not clear, given the reference to Quadruple Besiege, whether you mean this to be played on the (twisted‐toroidal) QB board, or merely on a normal rectangular 8×16 one. Even saying ‘on two boards’ doesn't really clarify things in that respect. Obviously this has effects on e.g. the meaning of ‘forward’.

Have you tested this? The usual restrictions on double‐move games (stop on giving check, one move per piece per turn, ⁊c) are there to retain some of the clarity of the original game; w/o restrictions things like rifle capture and pieces which can reach anywhere on an empty board (or indeed one with relatively few pieces) in one move become possible, though since you mention the former that may be your intent? Probably it'll be a bit too tactical for most tastes

There can be some reverse variations […] the loser is the one who loses any last remaining piece type.

This seems like an interesting idea, though at first glance it seems you might have to do something to incentivise captures as otherwise both sides would just avoid capturing in order to stop any of their own pieces becoming royal. Perhaps as a Jeu Forcé (either total or limited to e.g. pawns)? Either that or have slightly‐different armies so that there are some royal pieces from the beginning

To contribute (hopefully clarifying, but at risk of doing the opposite) to the discussion of the pieces:

It is established that a triangular‐celled board is isomorphic to a hex‐cell board with one hex‐‘bishop’ binding inaccessible. On such a board, the usual triangular ‘rook’ — the same rook present here — becomes a crooked rook making 60° turns between steps (known to Gilman as a Longgirlhexer). The usual colourbound piece, moving in a straight line on triangles of the same colour to every second ‘rook’ cell is then equivalent to the hex ‘bishop’, while the usual ‘third’ rider, moving in a straight line alternating steps through the sides and across the corners, is a normal hex rook that can jump over the gaps (or, equivalently, a straight wazir–dabbaba alternator which I haven't seen named)

This game's bishop analogue is then equivalent to the crooked hex ‘bishop’ (Gilman's Longrangehexer), hence bearing the same relation to the rook analogue as the usual hex ‘bishop’ to the hex rook

The knight analogue here is equivalent to a hex dabbaba + hex ‘knight’; the pawn analogue is more unusual

Sorry if my comment has caused offence; this was not my intent. Nor was I recommending this not be published (as Ben notes, I'm not an editor so it's not my place to do so), merely noting some things that I found unclear.

In particular wrt the geometry of the board, your comment confirms what I thought; I just wasn't completely sure that's what you meant: your opening sentence simply says the game is inspired by QB w/o further qualifying what aspect of it, and whilst the beginning of your note refers (as does your response) to ‘changing geometry in space’, note that QB's shape doesn't change during the game — it's unusual but constant — so I thought it better to clarify which board you meant that to risk incorrectly assuming the wrong one. Iow your article (as you note) never mentions unusual geometry, but doesn't (to my admittedly conservative reading) deny it explicitly enough for me to be confident it's not assumed. And in any case it's a moot point as Ben (an actual editor) is happy to leave that aspect as is and you've answered my question here.

As for the question about testing, that's cool that you do! It's not unusual that people don't, which for some games can work OK (especially if it's intended more as ‘artwork’ or theoretical exploration than actual play, as some of us are more inclined to), but for stuff like this that's more unusual can be risky. I'd be interested to see some games, maybe even with some analysis, though idk about participating in a tournament — correspondence play is not really my thing; I'm more of an over‐the‐board player (and also I don't understand Russian, so I would have difficulty navigating the linked website).

As to alleged prejudice, I apologise if I've come across that way; the comments were not aimed at you in particular, merely at the page as I saw it. And I'd've expected, of all places, that a forum devoted to chess variants would be among the likeliest places to get these kinds of questions. Nothing personal.

@Editorship: it was briefly a thing for us non‐editors to explicitly disclaim editorship when commenting on unpublished articles; would it be preferred to continue doing so? Or (@Fergus I suppose) might it be worth somehow marking Editors specially in the Comments?; there is currently no indication of who is or isn't an editor w/o going to one of the special pages, and since People Don't Read Documentation…

Is anyone actually using this 'Alfaerie Animals' representation?

As far as I'm aware, not for Ultima itself (even the GC preset lacks it as an option), though some of its offshoots (Rococo, Fugue) and other games using its pieces (Carlos Cetina's Universal Chesses) use its Chameleon, Long Leaper, and Immobiliser quite consistently. Those games use a different image for the Withdrawer though (An ox, whereas the one here is used by David Howe for his Chess on a Longer Board with a few Pieces Added) and don't feature the Coördinator at all

Whether use in other games qualifies the piece set to be used on this page too is another question of course (though one could certainly argue for at least the GC preset to include them as an option)

The thing with the Piececlopedia is that the articles are primarily supposed to be about the pieces, not the names — so a page about “the Lancer” isn't really well‐defined in the sense you mean.

Some of the ‘Lancer’s you mentioned do have some history of their own: you've noted that the Lancers Chess turning piece has uses in a few games (albeit all by the same author); the (4,2) leaper, though rare due to its severe binding, has been used by problemists (as the Stag), as well as in a couple of games by Charles Gilman (as the Charolais); the Wild Jokers piece is more commonly known as an Alibaba, which already has a page; TigerChess' lancers are also well‐attested (most commonly as Modern Dabbaba/Elephant) though without pages; and the Pawn Shōgi and Starbound Sliders pieces are (apparently one‐off) enhancements of Shōgi's Lance. It might also be noted that there was a proposal to rename Betza's Fibnif (which also has a page) to ‘Lancer’

Of those that don't have pages already, the ‘Modern’ 2‐square leapers and the (4,2) probably deserve articles, assuming anyone is up for writing them; the one from Lancers Chess might as well (it's an interesting piece and the only one herewhich doesn't exist under any other name) but the fact that only one person has used it might disqualify it (though standards have varied in the past)

As for Falcons, George Duke's piece has seen enough use (not to mention an independent reïnvention) that it probably deserves a page; the fBbR Hunter counterpart (a.k.a. Hawker) might do too though a comprhensive overview is probably more difficult as it's very easily independently devised

@Aurelian

The pieces you're proposing, with, as you say, less emphasis on centralisation in exchange for greater power at range, remind me a little of a more organic way to achieve what Big Outer Chess was going for. I wouldn't worry a priori about a ‘lack of personality’ from being part‐leaper and part‐rider; even things like the Archbishop have plenty of character, and there's certainly a distinctiveness to such a dispersed pattern of movement

As for partial bent riders, if not the chiral ones what about Ships/Snaketongues or their sideways or (as yet unattested afaik) crabwise counterparts?

The compound cannon would indeed probably deserve careful handling

@Jean‐Louis

Your Godzilla is not particularly less new than your Simurgh/Qilin: Gilman gives the latter two as respectively Metropolitan and Ancress — and even uses them in Four‐Linepiece Fusion — though ofc it makes sense that you minght prefer to stick with the monster theme for the names.

That said, whilst duplication of ‘Simurgh’ is fine (Gilman uses it for the viceroy‐then‐bishop viceroy‐then‐rook which only exists in 3D (or hex)), it seems odd to me that you'd choose to duplicate Qilin, which is just the Chinese version of Japanese Kirin, i.e. the familiar FD