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Unachess. Start with empty board and begin with dropping pieces. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
Daniil Frolov wrote on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 12:41 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
I played similar variant, but with 2 differences:
1. Kings must be dropped on first moves.
2. Pawns may be dropped anywhere, expect 1st and 8th ranks.

Another variant, i can suggest (i did not played it yet):
Pawns have same defination of forward. This one may be played with 3 players. Actually, with any number of players, from 2 to 16. For multiplayer variant, rules for capturing/mating king and pieces of lost player must be chosen before playing, many variants are possible.

JT K wrote on Thu, Oct 20, 2016 11:54 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I just finished entering a variant of my own called Chessembly that is almost identical to this!  It hasn't been posted to this site yet, but probably because Jeff Miller apparently beat me to it by many years.  I was a bit upset to see it already in existence, but then I should have known this type of variant would be invented by now.  In fact, in my version I was thinking of adding certain restrictions that I also see here in Unachess 2 and Parachute.

http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/chessembly

The main difference between my version and this (which would greatly influence the opening of the game) is that a person cannot drop ANY piece past the first four ranks, not just the pawns.  This would make dropping an army on one side of the board the most likely opening for both players (then some movement would start to happen gradually as the overall assembly becomes apparent).  It basically means that each player has their own "drop" territory (on their own side of the board).


George Duke wrote on Thu, Oct 20, 2016 07:28 PM UTC:

BigBoard is another placement CV.


A. M. DeWitt wrote on Sun, Jan 21 05:21 PM UTC:

The original Unashogi is quite interesting, but has a fatal flaw. Because King drops are unrestricted, impasses are easily attained by dropping the King into the promotion zone, making draws very common, as most pieces have a forward bias to them making a King on the far side of the board very difficult to mate, especially if surrounded by friendly pieces.

I thought up with variant of Unashogi, called Unashogi II in this comment, which is the has the same rules as standard Shogi plus the following additional rules.

  • The board is initially empty and the players start with the usual 
  • A piece cannot capture or move into the promotion zone in any way unless the friendly King is on the board.
  • If the friendly King is in the hand, Pawns and Lances cannot be dropped on the last four ranks, and Knights cannot be dropped on the last five ranks.
    • This is a corollary of the restriction against dropping where you cannot move.
  • The King can only be dropped on the first three ranks.

Edit: This solves the problem of impasses, but allows for easy checkmates if the first player drops his King early.


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