In 1996 Sean Duggan posted a poor chess variant on this site. Countless others followed in his footsteps. In 2003 he posted a lengthy comment explaining what was wrong with his original game and how he planned to fix it. This comment is well worth reading. Duggan's Fantasy Chess (revised)
has some interesting features. Even the movement diagram of the Golem is unusual, the closest example that comes to mind is Mark Hedden's Supercomputer, which can move either like a Golem or a Camel.
I am taking the liberty proposing some rules changes, which may or may not improve the game. Instead of teleporting, limit the Assassin to a 'queen-leap', i.e. it moves to any empty square orthogonally or diagonally, regardless of how many pieces exist in between. This noncapturing move is used by the Gold General and Silver General in Al-Ces (Köksal Karakus 2000). This rule change is an addition to my earlier proposal: use ordinary Knights (not Archers) and set up the pawns on ranks 3 and 6.
In 1996 Sean Duggan posted a poor chess variant on this site. Countless others followed in his footsteps. In 2003 he posted a lengthy comment explaining what was wrong with his original game and how he planned to fix it. This comment is well worth reading. Duggan's Fantasy Chess (revised) has some interesting features. Even the movement diagram of the Golem is unusual, the closest example that comes to mind is Mark Hedden's Supercomputer, which can move either like a Golem or a Camel.
I am taking the liberty proposing some rules changes, which may or may not improve the game. Instead of teleporting, limit the Assassin to a 'queen-leap', i.e. it moves to any empty square orthogonally or diagonally, regardless of how many pieces exist in between. This noncapturing move is used by the Gold General and Silver General in Al-Ces (Köksal Karakus 2000). This rule change is an addition to my earlier proposal: use ordinary Knights (not Archers) and set up the pawns on ranks 3 and 6.