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Megachess. Played on 6 boards arranged in a 2 by 3 grid. (24x16, Cells: 384) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, May 22, 2008 07:27 PM UTC:
Excellent idea to use the number of kings to determine the number of moves. It gives some structure to the game, helps speed it up and, I think, helps reduce draws. Is anyone aware of other games that use this idea of multiple kings with a move for each? 
I'd be interested to hear about any games played, and how they went. I suspect things could get confusing and rather overwhelming at times. The number of different pieces with their generally long ranges are difficult to juggle in a superlarge variant with multi-move turns. With 6 moves/turn, co-ordinated attacks would be common, as players tried to overwhelm local defenses for one or two kings. However, this can't occur until the pawns have sorted themselves out: if in the middle, probably by massacre, but I'd expect groups of pawns to open up 'doorways' for the sliders to advance to be a more common tactic. I'd think you'd have to massacre a fair number of pawns in this game to let the other pieces move at all. 
Six moves per player per turn eliminates calculating more than a couple turns ahead; the board changes too much after 12 moves [6 by each player] to make a serious effort to calculate past 1 turn difficult. You can see trends and make plans of a more or less general nature but that's about it.
Finally, giving the knight a teleport ability compensates them for the beating they take in movement on the 16x24 board, and adds a little touch of 3D to the game.