Ratings & Comments

I used a piece with the FD move in Megalomachy, under the name Spearman. It has the special property there that the 'flying pieces' (a special kind of multi-hoppers) that are also in that variant cannot hop over it. It is of course a matter of taste whether to consider this a special property of the Spearman or of these flying pieces, and in the absence of flying pieces it would just be a normal Kirin.

The names Kirin and Kylin are of course both western spellings of the same Japanese word, the Japanese not being able to hear the difference between L and R, and randomly mixing those up in pronunciation.

Hey Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!

Edit: NaoQi.

Did the following writeup to further explain my design thinking for this game:

Problem: Large variants easily become too complex for (average) human players to handle skillfully, and too sharp. Having too many strong pieces while keeping the standard king increases the probability of an early check mate.

Solution: Keep the standard pieces, but apart from that, introduce only short and medium distance pieces into the game. This will generate some localized situations of lower complexity.

Problem: Having only a single chain of pawns in a large variant decreases the density of pawns compared to standard chess. The pieces proper will easily stomp through the pawns' defence line. But having partial or whole double pawn chains makes it tedious to develop pieces, among other things.

Solution: Introduce a few Shields into the game, which kind of serve as a mobile pawn replacement.

Problem: Long leapers feel at home on a large board, serving a similar function as the Knight on 8x8, but they can have too powerful forking ability behind the opponent's pawn chain, especially in the early opening.

Solution: Move the pawn chain up to the fourth rank. Make the third rank consist mostly of empty space.

Problem: On a big board, shorter range pieces can easily become stranded in irrelevant areas of the board during the endgame. A stranded Kjempe could in practice be worth much less than 5 pawns.

Solution: This is actually somewhat of a feature. It will be a strategic element of the game to try to predict where the action will be, and move short range pieces there in time. Just make sure that the opening is sufficiently dull that all pieces have time to come into play.

Problem: What does a large variant bring, other than more of the same?

Solution: Make sure the new pieces contrast each other and the old ones, and that pieces can threaten each other assymetrically (either through different movement patterns, or by a defended weaker piece attacking a stronger defended one). Allow for a larger number of quasi-equal exchanges than standard chess, leading to various kinds of assymetric endgames.

Problem: Bishops are pointing at the rooks in the initial position.

Currently no solution: Yes, this is a problem which limits the opening possibilities a bit. At least fortunately the third pawn from the edge is triple defended... At one point I had the Kjempes starting at d3 and i3 to obscure the bishops, but I found this led to more kludginess in the opening.

Weird facts: the Nao has never been used in a game, but the Nightrider in Jumping Knights Chess performs capturing moves in an opposite manner. Continuing a proposal by Peter Aronson, this game requires every piece to capture "checkers fashion" by moving beyond the target piece. An example follows:

Hopefully the Nao movement diagram will still be here in the future. Suppose we change the Nao to a Nightrider and place this diagram in the center of the Jumping Knights Chess 10x10 board. Then the Black Queen shields the White Queen, while the White Rook can be captured by a two-step Nightrider move to the "zero rank".

In my Rose Chess XII, I used a three wheeled War Machine graphic for a piece that either moves one square orthogonally or jumps three squares orthogonally. The name and graphic might also be suitable for your 1-2-3 square leaper, the Custodian. There will always be some overlap in piece names here, in fact War Machine is more commonly used for a Wazir+Dabbabah combination.

Worth a look is Peter S. Hatch's Fantasy Grand Chess, including the Druid Army, with twenty different (mostly short range) units. There is no duplication, even for the pawn-equivalent units. One of these pieces, the Stag, is identical to my War Machine (which Greg Strong calls a Scout).

Each pieces except Pawn in this army can defend a Pawn that defends it.

The setup part still says that Banshee is RNN.

I can't Interactive Diagram: In Commenton this even though there's an "Add Tags" button.

The author, Jörg Knappen, has updated this page.

This is a remark on spelling: The little Fers/Ferz occurs in both spellings in this file. Both spellings are legitimate but I think you should decide on one and use it consistently and mention the other one only in the main entry for the piece. My personal preference is Ferz with z, but I don't mind if you use Fers throughout.

Here's an interactive diagram using the Alfaerie piece set and using the three wheeled war machine icon for the Custodian. Thanks for the tip!

To be honest though, I still somewhat prefer the Greenwade icon set for this game, I think the two kinds of bishops are easier to distinguish. I'm planning on making a Game Courier preset for this game though, and then I'll provide both options.

Edit: This interactive diagram comment was updated with the updated rules and starting position for the game.

Lion-Grande_Acedrez:

The combined (0,3)(1,3) leaper (Camel+Threeleaper) plays in Citadelir Chess 2020, Daphne Snowmoon. Named Prophet.