Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)

Fergus has continued on the sort of theme I think is good stuff!

You just have to love those Unicorns!

Nice powerful pieces added, on a large board. What's not to love?

The voidrider is a really cool concept for a piece!

I like the Civil War basic version variant of this series. Though classed more as a wargame, I can see the outlines of a chess-like strategy at play during a game.

A lovely use of the otherwise powerful jumping pieces included, by having them on a rather long board.

Another cool concept for a variant from Fergus.

I like attempts to extend notable chess variants onto hexagonal boards.

A seminal variant that perhaps deserves to be part of a seperate category (e.g. 'Ultima-style Variants') on a CVP menu somewhere.

Even if you might never play this particular variant, you have to love such a gargantuan effort and game. Will we ever see a rules-enforcing preset version of it on Game Courier? ;)

Even if you might never play this particular variant, you have to love such a gargantuan effort and game. Will we ever see a rules-enforcing preset version of it on Game Courier? ;)

I've recently had the pleasure of playing a full correspondence game of Sovereign Chess, so I'm now ready to review.  The overall concept is excellent, and I know through conversations that the creator put much thought into all the principles of good game design.

Despite my five star rating I do need to mention a few criticisms, though they are minor - and a person could probably adjust the rules in their own house games anyway:

- I'm not sure if the colored square setup is ideal for creating a lot of different opening sequences, though I could be proven wrong in time.  Although I made a mistake in my game, I do feel that my original idea of occupying red as White was pretty strong and difficult to fight against (for whomever goes 2nd).  The pie rule was implemented to control this, but not sure how well that would pan out in practice.

- The board is 16 x 16, so it can definitely get a bid tedius to use pawns or knights in a genuinely effective way - except for defense.

- The rules about coup d'etat and pawn promotion regime change don't do much for me- and the less rules the better in my opinion.

Having said all that, Sovereign Chess has a lot of well-crafted rules.  The creator made sure that only one piece can control a color at a time, to make things easier to grasp and also prevent stagnant/stalemated positions.  Sliding pieces cannot go too far and gives knights a chance to thrive - or at least control the center.  The varient seems to have a lot of candidate moves at any given stage.  One could abandon their color, could try capturing the controlling piece, or simply attack the controlled pieces as needed.  Defection is a good "regime change" rule, where one decides to abadon his/her controlled pieces in favor of a better army color.  It's a lot of fun to determine the actual VALUE of certain pieces and colors, especially when trading.  An interesting tactic I found was actually abandoning a color to "neutralize it" and create an uncapturable wall around the king as needed.

Overall, I have to say that I'd play it online a lot if available.

This looks like an interesting variant that deserves to be played more on Game Courier. I'm not sure I completely like that in the setup each player has two horsemen on the rook's files that take a move longer to promote minimum than the other horsemen, nor am I sure I completely like the king-to-the-last-rank wins extra victory condition added to the variant, but perhaps it's all a matter of taste.

Nice variant, though I fear on average a well played game may be lengthy. Creating a hexagonal shatranj variant was going to be on my fairy chess bucket list, as I thought I might be filling a void one day, but once I saw this game I realized that there was no such void to fill.

There are reams more nightriders mostly unutilized than the ordinary hack one developed by Dawson a century ago. So far they remain in problems and thought experiments.  Classic essay here proposes Straight Wide Crooked, Diagonal Narrow Crooked, Diagonal Wide Crooked, and Straight Narrow Crooked.  Best of all, the essential nightrider Quintessence.  Each one makes better more interesting play than Betzan-tagged 'NN'.  Play of that ordinary Dawson nightrider is inferior because it just duplicates successive Knight moves same direction.  It is no more interesting than "limited" pieces like an up-to-three-step Bishop or Chess Different Armies Short Rook.

Quintessence itself gets play in odd-shaped 84-square Quintessential Chess, adding also  Leeloo compound R + Quintessence.  

Quinquereme takes it up to 12x12 with the same Quintessence.  Each of the various nightriders in combinations, one and two of each together with some of the other 6 or 8 piece-types in the set, on different board sizes can create thousands, well millions easily, of individualized CVs.  Worth exploring in the abstract are the standard boards 9x9, 9x10, 10x10, 10x12, 12x12, 10x16.  All the large sizes should have a variant nightrider species for improved implementations. Even rudimentary Dawson NN of such wide appearance is superior to also-overused Carreran BN and RN, four hundred years beat to death.

You have to love such a big board variant that doubles-down (and then some) on the FIDE armies' piece types.

This game has everything I love in a boardgame:  simple rules, interesting play, a fun theme, and unusual mechanics.   The stone throwing reminds me a bit of Amazons, but using the stones as roads is completely new to me.  There's a choice at every turn whether to try to build your own road, or destroy your opponent's road.  

There's also a bit of a hint of hnefatafl with the two goals of surrounding and immoblizing the other piece, and reaching the far side of the board.

I followed the link in the article and read about the history of the Moais, how the inhabitants descended into warfare as the island was deforested, and how they destroyed the Moais of other inhabitants as part of that warfare, which adds a darker tone to the theme.  

What a fascinating and unusual game.  I really love this one.  I wish it were more widely known.  
Would the designers mind if I listed it on boardgamegeek, with a link back to this page?  

I like this concept. Pieces can suddenly "come out" as something else. I suppose this could be called a variant of chess with incomplete information — as the "true identity" of each player's pieces is known to the respective players, but not to their opponents. At the same time, cloaking forces the player to decide in advance which piece will morph into what, preventing arbitrariness. 

I'm delighted to see a variant based on triangular cells, rather than squares or hexagons. Not that there's anything wrong with squares and hexagons, but that triangles are under-explored and under-exploited. Christian Freeling and Graeme Neatham invented several trigonal chess games, and I contributed a couple of my own (Rotorblades Chess and Rotorblades Fusion Chess). And of course there's Klinzha. But for the most part, inventors seem to give triangular boards a miss. 

I see that Chessagon tries to be as faithful as possible to traditional chess. That's one "pole" of the chess variant universe; the other "pole" is games like Arimaa, which barely qualify as chess variants. My own taste is for something in the middle —I like games that extrapolate the moves of the traditional pieces to the new geometry, but also introduce pieces that take advantage of the new geometry in a way that the familiar pieces cannot. The only piece of this nature to do so in Chessagon is the Duke, and I think there is room for more unusual pieces that would create interesting possibilities for play. 

Hi Silvia! Thank you for introducing us to this exotic blend, which is one of the best I've seen. I've seen a few east-west hybrids before, and even tried inventing a couple of them myself, which I never published here because I didn't like them very much — they seemed to be neither fish nor fowl. But yours blends them in a way that doesn't seem forced or stretched, and I really like that!

This is a straightforward CV by Gilman.  To suit the constricted board, he decides to use Shogi promotees for Bishop and Rook, adding Wazir and Ferz respectively.  Pawns are Centennial-acclaimed Quadra-pawns.  Some restriction on Knight at inside corners.  That's it.  Should be playable enough short games.  

But the piece in right corner needs correction to King.

Parton made Neutral King in 1953, where player has own orthodox pieces but the King is co-owned and

yet has to be checkmated.  Simple and elegant.  Most of Gilman's CVs are hurt by overcomplications in

piece-moves, odd board sizes, too many special rules, or attempt hybridizing Eastern chesses with forced

templates.  Once in a while he strikes paydirt such as AltOrthHex idea of splitting up the hexagonal Rook

into two, though nobody has really done anything with that either.  

Neutral Subject realizes that Parton's Mutator has wider applicability. Here player only has King and Queen to begin.  Neutral pieces get moved and then assigned to one side or the other.  The criterion to assign is applied at end of each turn according to hypothetical attack of each 'Neutral' on any piece already assigned.  Who wouldn't want more pieces rather than fewer? Many other CVs could be made in this genre of the pieces on board not belonging to either army initially.  

Charles' novel CV invention, expanding on Parton, gets somewhat awkward explanation in his essay. Like Aronson and Howe with Rococo, great idea is not followed up with clear summary fully disambiguating.

Still in all, there could be other ways to set up the bazaar of recruitment to build the forces in subvariants and new CVs this type of possible breakthrough Mutator.

Still two things: "The King may not move back over the river; however, he still delivers check backwards." When the black king is on f4, the white king can't move to f5 giving the king on f4 check (it would move into check itself). I think you mean that when there is a black king on f4, the white king can't move to f5 or e5.

On e1 and d8 must be generals in the starting position, musn't they?

The Panther is a very interesting piece. It has similar characteristics like the knight. After two moves it covers a similar distance like the knight. The leaps ar (1,1), (0,2), (1,3), (0,4) and (3,3). The only difference is that the night can't go (0,6) so the operating range of the Panthter should be slightly better.

Chris

Fifteen years til the first comment and rating now.

Sava made New-Chess by 1973, in time for the second edition of Gollon's book.  There are Marshall RN (but not Cardinal BN), Amazon RBN and Gnu N-Camel.  Then Betza and Cohen came up with Tutti-Frutti in 1978 with the 'Capablanca two' and Amazon again, this time on 8x8.  So it appears Betza and Cohen got some inspiration from then recent New-Chess and thought it important to put their similar piece mix on little 8x8. New CVs were fewer and further between those decades. In fact, Betza always designed 1970s through 2003 on 8x8 with two exceptions.  His 'Outrigger' article adds files to get 8x10, and Chess on Really Big Board has four 8x8 boards for 256 squares.*

No allowing in New-Chess for Pawn three-step, but it has perfect implementation of modern free castling with the King moving over 2 or more but not past Rook.  Gollon's book has a few dozen CVs exhibited, nothing like the couple thousand of Pritchard 'ECV'  twenty years later.

Aronson calls Complete Permutation Chess more flamboyant 'Tutti-Uti-Frutti Chess' in that one's text, and if I had noticed the above sequence more carefully I would have approved TUF over bland CPC. Complete Permutation adheres to idea of using each possible bi-compound once -- originating in Betza & Cohen.

*Betza's Chessopoly and Race Chess are 64-square 4 x 16.