Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I think it may suit the purpose to also include some Dabbaba-riders or something like that. I never played a game which uses flying pieces, so I dilettantly assume that the Eagle is too valuable to use it for an explicit attack unlike DR which can control only a quarter of the board space, and so can be forcibly exchanged for something more valuable. I think it can be more efficient to use such types of pieces, rather than expanding new rules which govern their relations (#2).

The Eagle must indeed be worth significantly more than a Queen. (Although in the late end-game its advantage would disappear.) But you would use it to attack the King, which is worth the game. A Terror would probably also be more valuable. You would not waste it on any lesser piece.

Dababbariders would not be dangerous for a King hiding behind 4 rows of pieces.

Nice. At first sight, the learning curve is important for me with 33 different pieces. Also the board is very dense, more than the 50% I'm used to work with. I don't know if this is a factor favorizing shorter games. There are some pieces I like, some I'm less easy with (Nightrider, Grasshopper),some I never used at all. The flying ones seems very nice in this context. Did you consider to use other Japanese pieces such as the burning ones or the hook movers? Why renaming the Kirin and Phoenix? I'm not fully convinced that it is necessary to forbid the Warrior to capture normally. Warrior is maybe not a good name if it doesn't fight much. Have you run some games of it? How many moves did you get typically?

Why renaming the Kirin and Phoenix?

I never liked the name 'Kirin' very much. (It is meaningless to westerners.) And 'Phoenix' collided with the naming theme, as I wanted to reserve bird names for the pieces with 'flying capture'. The flying Q and R needed to be separated by some low-valued obstacle to prevent they would attack each other in a symmetric initial setup. And I did not like to stack them behind the flying B, as that would leave the suffocated King and Terrors exposed to frontal flying attack. Ground-based units that are able to interfere with overflying birds must use projectile weapons, which led me to Archer and Spearman. (I would have liked Crossbow instead of the latter, but that was not in the alfaerie set.) One excuse for renaming is that in this game they are not 'normal' Phoenix and Kirin, but passively guard the skies as well, unlike any other non-flying piece.

Also the board is very dense, more than the 50% I'm used to work with. I don't know if this is a factor favorizing shorter games.

I guess this is a Shogi influence that trickeled into the design, as there filling can be near 67%. How this affects game length is a subtle issue. More pieces tends to increase the length, larger (and especially deeper) board would too. With 50% density the 80 pieces that I have would require 18x18 rather than the 16x16 I used, but switching to 18x18 would leed to longer games. Decreasing the number of pieces to 64 would shorten the games. But this would be at odds with the goal for making a huge variant. I guess it depends on what you use as the metric for the size of chess variant: number of pieces or board size. For a given number of pieces high density shortens the typical game by more intense combat.

As I mentioned, it is mainly the depth of the board that counts. Or even more accurately, the initial distance between the armies. I dislike distances of more than 6 ranks; this drags out the opening phase, just to transport the army to where they can engage the opponent. For ~80 pieces you would need to have a 27x12 board to get 25% fill (each army 3 filled ranks, and 6 ranks in between). This seems too extreme. (Although it would solve the problem of Pawn scarcity.)

An alternative would be to not completely pack the armies in the initial setup, but starting them in a more advanced position in a more vacuous setup. E.g. use 18 x 18, but spread the 80 pieces over the 108 squares of the first 6 ranks for a 49.4% overall filling. That would leave ample free space within the camps to quickly develop pieces that started in the rear. So perhaps this is the superior solution. It would make the appearance quite different from the giga-tera-exo series. But I like the idea!

I'm not fully convinced that it is necessary to forbid the Warrior to capture normally. Warrior is maybe not a good name if it doesn't fight much.

Good point. This was an (admittedly ugly) solution to the problem that a Pawn protected by another Pawn cannot be eliminated without incurring a loss when you can only attack it with pieces that are worth more than 2 Pawns, no matter how many attackers you bring to bear. The only viable way to threaten it is with another Pawn. Which takes a long time when these Pawns have to cross a large board to get there.

Now the Terror can pick off protected Pawns with its Advancer capture mode. But against a closed rank of Pawns Advancer capture does not end on a safe square. So if a player can support the foremost Pawns on their original rank by moving up another wall of (diagonally capturing) pawns directly behind it, it would either take large sacrifices to break through it even with the help of Terrors, or very many moves to organize a Pawn storm.

Of course this is a self-inflicted problem, due to having multiple pawn-like pieces in the same file. But I wanted to include some 'spare' promotion ability, and the pieces providing that would have to be placed somewhere. One way to solve it would be to make the Warriors more powerful, and therefore more valuable, so that Warrior + Pawn is worth more than a typical minor, and capturing a Pawn protected by a Warrior with an abundance of attackers no longer is a sacrifice. But I don't want this extra power to result in the ability to find an easy path to promotion. This could be done by giving it extra captures, but I also don't want such low-valued pieces to be able to mutually protect each other, as this would allow them to form hard-to-break defensive structures all by themselves. Pieces with many captures and few non-captures tend to favor defense over attack.

An alternative would be to provide sufficiently many pawn-valued pieces that can capture into a tightly knit double wall of pawns with disregard for its own survival. And that do not take a long time to cross the board. My original idea was that the Grasshoppers would satisfy this role. But it seems they are too strong, and too easily find prey amongst the opponent's more valuable pieces. The requirement of fast movement and low value is somewhat contradictory, but Grasshopping does provide it. True Grasshoppers have much to dangerous captures, though. So perhaps a divergent piece that moves as Grasshopper, but captures as a (forward) Alfil (or even Dababba) would do it ('Ram'?).

Adding extra pieces to specifically destroy pawns seems to defeat the purpose of adding extra promotable pieces, though. Unless there are fewer of those. I suppose this is justifiable, because the attacker can choose its point of attack, while a defender would have to keep up the defense everywhere. So 16 Pawns, 8 Warriors and 4 Rams might be a good mix.

If the Warriors become more or less normal Pawns, they could be started in the wings of the 2nd rank, with King & Rooks on the 1st rank, so that castling would produce a normal King fortress after the pieces starting in front of it have left to engage in battle.

This is how it would look (with almost the same piece set) on 18 x 18, to reduce the density to a for Chess more normal 50,6%. The Grasshoppers were abandoned, and replaced by Rams (which move as a Grasshopper, but have only a single forward Dababba capture). The Warriors now are Metamachy Pawns, and I added two more (so there now are 24 promotable pieces), to compensate for those that will be traded for Rams.

The battle area is still 6 ranks deep, and the extra space is located inside the camps. This was done in such a way to create ample space for lateral movement of the orthogonal sliders, and leave corridors for developing the valuable pieces that start in the rear.

Since the variant uses fast castling, one can castle immediately to the open space on the back rank. But early castling seems suicidal; one would first have to build a shield against flying attacks at the desired location of the castle.

Thanks for answering. It's a nice design. About the large distance between the front rows on a very large board, I agree with you. You say "An alternative would be to not completely pack the armies in the initial setup, but starting them in a more advanced position in a more vacuous setup." That's funny because this is exactly what I was thinking about since yesterday evening :=)

Well, the idea is not really original, because it is what Maka Dai Dai Shogi does as well.

That is true.

After considering several other possibilities, I think the best solution to avoid that the Warrior can be used to strengthen a Pawn wall to create an almost unbreakable barrier is to make it more valuable. If Warrior + Pawn are worth more than a typical minor, having a Pawn protected by a Warrior isn't problematic when you bring enough attackers to bear on the Pawn. By giving the Warriors the same diagonally forward capture as a Pawn, it cannot be used to increase the number of low-valued protectors of a Pawn to what it already could be by protecting it with Pawns.

To increase the value without destroying the pawn-like character (i.e. binding to a file, irreversible move) one can endow it with extra captures. The backward Knight captures are suitable for this: these cannot easily be used for strengthening a Pawn chain, as the Warriors cannot overtake Pawns in the same file.

It appears adding the backward half of the Knight captures to a (Metamachy) Pawn is enough to increase the value of a Warrior to slightly over 2 Pawns. A closed wall of Pawns set up on the 2nd rank, used to shield the King, would not behave very differently from the normal Pawn shield.

I am still 'on the fence' for whether 16x16 with high piece density or 18x18 with a more normal density would be better. It seems natural do push Pawns and develop the minors first, and this would automatically create manoeuvring room for the noble pieces behind those. Starting with many empty squares in the camp makes it much more difficult to maintain the threat of a suffocated mate, and thus decreases the usefulness of the flying pieces.

I think the 16x16 board looks better. It seems less arbitrary than the 18x18 with lots of irregular gaps in the setup.

I also think the 16x16 is better. There are plenty of leapers and jumping pieces. You have to have a defense against them and a more closely packed initial army helps that. Also I think you should not be worried to much about the pawn-warrior combo as there are pieces that can jump over. Camel for example. The exchange of a three points minor for pawn+warrior also makes things ok!

OK, so this is a revised 16x16 setup:

I moved the Warriors up to the 2nd rank, so they make a pre-fabricated 'pawn shield' for the King. The backward Knight captures of the Warriors are then quite useful: they protect the part of the back rank that is not shielded from attacks by the flying pieces. When an Eagle or Falcon (flying Q or R) could capture an unprotected piece there, this would deliver checkmate! So it is important that the entire back rank remains sufficiently protected against aerial intrusion.

The Warriors also provide solid protection of the pieces in front of them, on 3rd rank. They start heavily protected themselves, by putting a Prince in front of them, a Dragon King behind, and a Dragon Horse besides them, while also the Knight, Nightrider, Elephant, Rook, Frog, Archer and War Machine contribute to their defense. The Prince also helps protecting the minors on 4th rank. A strategically placed Leo initially protects three back-rank pieces and 3 Pawns.

I moved the Frog to the back rank, to provide more protection for the piece in the corner. Normally I would put minors in the most advanced locations. But the 4th rank cannot contain all of those anyway, and the Frog can move forward pretty fast through its 3-leap (which initially protects the otherwise unprotected War Machine).

So on the back-rank a1 is protected by Warrior (c2), Frog and Leo, b1 by Warrior (d2), Dragon King and Zebra, c1 by Warrior (a2), Leo and Cannon, d1 by Warrior (b2) and Leo, e1 by Warrior (c2), Dragon Horse, Amazon and Bat. The Frogs at d1/l1 thus are the weakest spots. Extra protectors can be arranged for them after the Zebra or Camel have been developed: a War Machine or Leo at d3, or moving the Falcon to e3 to discover the Vao.

With such a compact setup the pieces must not obstruct each other's development too much. The idea here is that the e- and l-file can be used as an exit corridor from the camp for orthogonal sliders, and the diagonals f1-a6 and k1-p6 for diagonal sliders. The Knight and Zebra on these files, and the Camel on these diagonals can all leave the camp in a single move, to quickly clear the corridors. The Bishop and Dragon Horse already start on these diagonals, and the Cannons on the files. The Griffon and Rhino are set up to slide into the file or diagonal, respectively. After the latter are gone, a second diagonal can be cleared by developing the War Machine, allowing Queen and Archbishop to deploy. The Lion and Chancellor can be developed through their Knight jumps, when some space on 4th rank becomes available.

The King was moved to the back rank, to allow it to (fast-)castle to behind the Warrior shield. With the King on a central file the corner piece would end deeply burried after fast-castling, though. To prevent that, the King was placed quite asymmetrically, on the k-file, and the corner pieces were made Dragon Kings rather than Rooks. Fast castling would then transport the Dragon King to k1, just beside the intended exit file, which it can reach even without clearing away the Cannon.

The Rams were all placed on the back rank. Like the Warriors these are pieces intended for use later in the game, to break through Pawn chains that have been formed. Their Grasshopper non-captures should allow them to get out and to the front line easily and quickly, once the camp is mostly cleared. The pieces behind the Warriors are mostly jumping pieces (Nightrider, Ram, Frog) so they can leave without the need to compromise the wall of Warriors.

The Advancer capture I gave to the Terror might be too strong. On a sparsely populated board there would usually be no defense against it other than moving a threatened piece away. And the forking power of a Queen is such that you could almost always attack multiple pieces. So the game would degenerate into a giant plunder raid. Good for shortening it, but probably not very much fun, as the outcome would be almost impossible to predict, and thus depend mainly on luck. I therefore changed the 'super ability' of the Terror (i.e. what it has over a normal Queen) to hit-and-run capture on an adjacent square through a double King move. (But no double capture; the second leg must be a non-capture to another square than where the Terror came from!) This makes the possibility for threatening two pieces with locust capture dwindle when the board gets empty, and thus allows defense by moving away the threatened piece.

I don't think the (for chess) unusually high piece density hurts a lot, because the Warriors are best kept in reserve until the board population thins enough to have a chance to promote them. And using the Rams early in the game is also troublesome: they would hardly contribute fire power, and would take many more moves to reach the frontline on a crowded board than on a sparsely populated one. So 12 of the 80 pieces will initially not compete for the available space in the battle area, reducing the effective density to a more normal 53%.

My experience with Vaos is to avoid putting them on a 2nd row, and also avoid a non-central place on the 3rd row from where they can capture too early. I would put them on h3/i3 for example, or on the 4th row.

Well, the Vaos were put there for a reason: to prevent diagonal attack on the Falcon and Eagle (flying R and Q) behind them while the latter have no room to move yet. The Interactive Diagram estimates the value of Falcon and Eagle similar to Lion and much better than Amazon, respectively, while the Bat, which could make such attacks, is estimated as weaker than a Nightrider or Dragon King. E.g. 1. l7 followed by 2. ARi6 would threaten 3. BAp9, gaining more than the value of a minor. (Or BAo8 after protecting that square, to gain more than a Queen value.)

I understand the principle of not allowing the Vao to quickly trade itself for something more valuable. I always considered the hoppers only about half as valuable as the corresponding sliders, which would make the Vao worth much less than a typical minor. If I should believe the heuristinc of the Interactive Diagram, the situation is different on 16x16, though. (I have no empirical values for 16x16.) And this stands to reason: the Vao (as well as Cannon) is an unlimited-range piece, and the value of such pieces should go up with the board size relative to the short-range leapers. According to the Diagram the value of the Vao is about equal to that of Knight, Camel, Zebra, Elephant, Frog.... (The Bishop, being a slider, is of course worth much more.) So there is no advantage in quickly trading a Vao for any of those.

On the contrary; the Diagram estimates piece values at a total piece density of 25%, and the value of hoppers tends to decrease towards the end-game. So in the opening, with a piece density of over 50%, the Vao would probably be worth significantly more than any minor, with the exception of the Bishop. This is basically the same argument as why it is bad to play 1.CxH in Xiangqi.

So I think having the Vaos hitting the opponent camp in the initial position is no longer a problem in a variant this large. As long as there aren't many very valuable pieces directly behind the Pawns.

@HG,

A long time ago you have told me in the context of Grand Chess that having more heavy pieces shorten the game. That is true both there and here. But from my experience it takes a lot more to proper calculate when many heavy pieces are present. This gives to me rather a sentiment of randomness. To do it right you need a lot of time each turn even for computers. I want to argue that although having a lot of heavy pieces shortens the game as number of turns, it does not on time on the clock. That being said, you have made a nice pyramid here. But I do hold against Grand chess that is has few light pieces.

Indeed, I agree with what you say here. I like to have a better balance between light and heavy pieces. It is easier to gain a weak piece than a strong one, and if there are too few weak pieces (or none left) then it becomes difficult to increase your advantage. This is one of the reasons end-games without Pawns are so drawish.

The large Shogi variants are overdoing it, though, by having too many excessively weak pieces (like the Shogi Knight, or Stone General, with just two moves). And many of the somewhat stronger pieces are steppers, which take a long time to move to where the action is. There is something to be said for Camels and Zebras on large boards!

I am starting to feel quite good about this latest setup. I should still play test it though, at the very least as computer self play. I can try to make the Diagram play against itself, but I am not sure it would be strong enough at affordable thinking times.

Would it break the game to allow 2 moves/player after white's initial turn 1 single move?

Would it break the game to allow 2 moves/player after white's initial turn 1 single move?

Probably not more than it would break most other variants.

But the goal was to design something with the character of Chess, but (much) larger. Introducing weirdness that has no bearing on size only makes it more alien. Perhaps the Terrors, with their hit-and-run capture and anti-trading rule are already too much.

A somewhat smaller version (56 pieces instead of 80) could look like this:

The piece density has been reduced to 56%. To simplify the learning curve the number of piece types has been reduced from 33 to 24, and apart from the Warriors and the Terror there are no pieces that you would not encounter in other variants. The Ram, Steward, Prince, Frog, Nightrider, Leo and Spearman have been eliminated, and the War Machine has been replaced by the (upward-compatible) Omega-Chess Champion to rebalance minors vs Rook-class pieces. From the 'nobles' the Lion and Amazon were eliminated, and the Eagle and Terror only appear in a single copy.

The initial position is vulnerable, because there are several pieces more valuable than a Cannon directly behind the Pawns (Bishop, Dargon Horse, Bat, Archbishop, Marshall), and Cannon attacks are not so easily disarmed as Vao attacks (where one can interpose a neighboring Pawn). Cannons and Vaos start on the back rank, though, so it will take some time to mount an attack with those. This allows the players to prepare their defenses for such attacks, but puts them under pressure to do this quickly.

The Marshall and Archbishop can simply move away when they get attacked; there is only a Zebra behind them, so they cannot be skewered. The Bats are in serious danger, though, as the most valuable pieces shelter behind those from flying attack. It is important here to prepare robust interposition of low-valued pieces to block Cannonattacks on them. After moving up the center Pawns the Zebras and Elephants can be used for this, and can be 'secured' by Vao or Champion protectors.

The Eagle (flying Q) has been moved to the back rank, to provide an extra protector for all other pieces there. So only the flying R (renamed to Raven as a mnemonic for this) requires an aerial blocker to prevent immediate trading, and the Archer (WA) satisfies that need.

The d-, e-, j- and k-files can be used for developing orthogonal sliders, the short diagonals from f1 and h1 for diagonal sliders. The Griffon and Rhino are placed behind the shield of flying pieces so that they can smoothly slide onto those rays. The King is placed off-center to get the Dragon King with which it (fast-)castles next to such an 'exit corridor'.

The Warriors now only have to move up a single step to join the Pawn wall, which then still leaves their backward Knight captures cover the back rank. This might be a good way to build a 'cannon-proof' castle for the King.

I like it too. Maybe I would consider switching Cannons and Vaos. (To avoid a threat on a11 and n11).

I also like the fast castling which seems well suited for these large CV.

I like it too. Maybe I would consider switching Cannons and Vaos. (To avoid a threat on a11 and n11).

Funny you should say that, because swapping those was actually the last change I made before posting. The threat to a11/n11 is not really a serious threat, right? Those are doubly protected Pawns, with a low-value protector (Knight). And even if they would have been unprotected, b11-b10 (m11-m10) would solve it through a healthy development move. It is probably worse that it also attacks b10/m10, but it is unlikely you would want to put the Knight there anyway.

Besides, the diagonal d1-n11 is not an easy exit for the Vao. It has a Rook in the path, which isn't going anywhere for some time, while moving the Archer would severely compromise the shielding of the noble pieces from flying attack. And the diagonal d1-a4 is blocked by a Warrior that will have a low priority in moving up, and a Dragon Horse, which will likely also be 'stationary developed' by just moving up the c-Pawn. From e1 the Vao could develop along the diagonal e1-a5, where the Knight and Zebra are likely the first pieces that will leave the camp, while b4 will be pushed to let out Ba3. The Vao will then be able to attack the opponent camp from a5, b4, c3 or d2 just as fast as it would be able to attack n11 from d1. But achieved through healthy development moves, rather than cumbersome manoeuvres that only weaken the position.

I worried much more about Cannon attacks. These cannot be solved by simply pushing a Pawn. And the two central files are very vulnerable, with 3 high-value pieces that can be skewered. Even the Bat is worth a Cannon + minor. It was a headache to make sure some minors could be put in front of the Bats in time to block the skewer.

Only now I notice that in the 14x14 setup white can threaten mate on the first move: 1. i5 ... 2. BAn9#. But this can be easily thwarted by 1... m10. Even if white would manage to back up the Bat by an Eagle (the only other flying piece that can move on the white diagonal), pushing up l11 would provide a second (X-ray) defender of n9 in the Archbishop. Both these 'forced' Pawn moves would be healthy development moves, liberating the Bishop and Dragon Horse. So nothing would be gained by white in pursuing this.

The players would have to be careful not to push their m-Pawn more than a single step, however; this would leave them with little defense against the BAn9/n6 threat. (The Archbishop alone is not sufficent defense, as it is worth more than a Bat, and the Bat would arrive on n6/n9 protected by the Terror.) At least until the l-Pawn gets pushed. After that DHl11 (l6) would provide an alternative defense.

So I don't think this is a problem. It just shows that the presence of the flying sliders keeps the players on edge, even early in the game when the King is still deeply buried. Which was exactly the point for including them. I suppose this is the equivalent of fool's mate in orthodox Chess, where the players have to mind the weakness of f2/f7.

@Jean-Louis: I have been thinking about how to name these large chess variants, and want the name to already suggest they are large. One idea for this was using Makromachy or Megalomachy. But since these are obviously inspired by Metamachy, I first want to check with you if you are OK with that.

I am still a bit in doubt with regard to the Eagle (= flying Q) vs Terror piece value and the anti-trading rule. If the values are too close, trading Eagle for Terror might be common. And this makes the anti-trading rule for Terrors ineffective; both the Eagles and the Terrors would disappear from the board fairly quickly. Only when the Terrors stick out so much that you would not trade them for anything else, a ban of trading them for each other would result in a prolonged existence.

Now in the late end-game, when little is left to jump over, the Eagle would become similar to a Queen. Which is definitely a lot worse than a Terror, which in addition has Knight moves and hit-and-run capture. But in the opening it is not so clear-cut. The Eagle has an enormous number of capture targets on a crowded board. If it would initially be worth more than a Terror, and its value would drop as the board gets emptied, there would be a point where the values are similar, and trading would be a good option.

One could argue that even though the Eagle can strike deep behind enemy lines, most of these strikes are useless, because pieces there tend to be protected, and the Eagle is too valuable to be traded for those. And even when the targets are not protected, capturing those is risky: although the Eagle can enter the opponent's camp easily to capture, it cannot easily withdraw to safety afterwards with a non-capture. But it would usually be able to sacrifice itself for a second piece, and two Queen-class pieces might be a good trade for it. Values guestimated by simple move counting doesn't take account of such subtleties.

If the Eagle turns out to be too valuable, it should be subject to an anti-trading rule as well. Or at least the rule that Eagles are also not allowed to capture a protected Terror. I wouldn't mind so much if they capture each other; it is the Terror I want to survive.