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Ultra Chess. On 10 by 10 board with two queens, and major pieces have an additional king's move. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

an easterner wrote on Sun, Sep 28, 2003 08:54 PM UTC:

To be frank, I think this variant is good in terms of gameplay (although
the fact that all the pieces can do the 'king move' may make the
gameplay a bit too uniform when the position is closed and many pieces
are
adjacent to each other), but I don't like the idea of having the
'Consort' piece on the board. If you really wanted to import the
'Asian
idea' of warfare into the game, you should have renamed the 'Consort'
piece as the 'Guard' or 'Advisor' as in Xiangqi. Having a 'Consort'
on a battlefield to act as a bodyguard is very strange according to the
eastern perspective. Maybe it is just me, but the idea of having the
King's female partner to protect him at close range on a battlefield
just
does not seem right. Ok, maybe this is an eastern view (or even just my
personal view), but having a female partner to act as a bodyguard just
seems too dishonourable for my taste. If I were the king, I would
probably
be ashamed into resignation on the first move of the game. At least in
International Chess the Queen's primary purpose is not to protect the
King but to attack the opponent and checkmate the other King.
Sorry if the comment seems somewhat irrelevant.

David Paulowich wrote on Wed, Apr 25, 2007 11:27 PM UTC:

Not to be confused with Ultrachess (9x8, Cells: 72). This chess variant gives the Rook, Knight and Bishop the ability to move to all adjacent squares. With two Queens and one Consort (Commoner), the moves of the pieces lack variety.

Jose Carrillo wrote on Mon, Jul 20, 2009 02:55 AM UTC:

Ajax Chess deals with the 'lack of variety' issue of Ultra Chess.

While all pieces in Ajax Chess (except for pawns) can play 1-square in any direction, minor pieces can not capture on their adopted 1-square moves (i.e. Rooks can't capture on their diagonal move, Bishops can't capture on their orthogonal moves and Knights are not allowed to capture on their one-square moves).

When I was experimenting with the movement of my Ajax-Pieces I found the same lack of variety that David Paulowich refered to in Ultra Chess, and decided to correct that feature by not allowing the minor pieces to capture with their adopted moves.

Anonymous wrote on Fri, Apr 2, 2010 01:01 PM UTC:

But, i think, it's not very strange to have queen on battlefield if think
that pieces are not single men, but battle detachment (all the more, it's
funny to imagine battle of only 32 people). Detachment can be commanded by
queen and by bishop (imagine fighting bishop is also funny). The more so
because in ancient India chess knight meant 3 (or 4, i don't remember)
horses, not one!
By the way, i read somewhere that in ancient Xiang-qi sets advisors where
represented as females...

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