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This page is written by the game's inventor, Graeme Neatham.

ExCoCo Chess

Courier and Courier-Spiel both have long and venerable histories, and there have been earlier attempts at modernizing them.

ExCoCo (Extended Combined Courier) Chess is my attempt, the immediate inspiration for which lies in an unfinished variant, Toroidal Honeycomb Combined Courier Chess (a 3D variant using hexagonal prism cells).

Setup

The two sides are White and Black, moving alternately with White moving first.

Each player starts with 44 pieces:
18 Pawns, 2 Knights, 2 Bishops, 2 Rooks, 1 Queen, 1 King,
2 Elphants, 2 Guards, 2 Horseguards, 2 Ministers, 2 Scouts,
2 Viscounts, 2 Thanes, 2 Dukes, and 2 Couriers.

The initial array is shown here -

Start Array

Pieces

All pieces from both variants are included.
The following table lists the original pieces and gives their use in ExCoCo.

Courier
Courier-Spiel
Movement from Courier/Courier-Spiel
ExCoCo Extension
Icon
King King
FIDE King
King
May re-castle
King
Queen
-- 1-step diagonally (Ferz)
Viscount
1-,2-, or 3-steps diagonally
Viscount
--
Queen
FIDE Queen
Queen
-- Queen
Rook
Rook
FIDE Rook Rook
-- Rook
Courier
Courier
FIDE Bishop
Bishop
-- Bishop
Bishop
-- 2-leap diagonally (Alfil)
Elephant
2-leap diagonally or orthogonally Elephnt
-- Bishop
1-step or 2-leap diagonally (Alfil+Ferz)
Minister
-- Minister
Knight
Knight
FIDE Knight
Knight
-- Knight
Man
Fool
1-step any direction
Guard
-- Guard
Schleich
-- 1-step orthogonally (Wazir)
Thane
1-,2-, or 3-steps orthogonally
Thane
-- Councillor
Fool+Knight
Horseguard

Horseguard
Pawn Pawn
FIDE Pawn
Pawn
Intial 1-,2-, or 3-steps.
FIDE promotion rules.
Pawn
-- -- -- Duke
Viscount+Thane
Duke
-- -- -- Scout 1-step or 2-leap orthogonally Scout
-- -- -- Courier
Minister+Scout
Courier

Rules

The Rules are esssentially as for Courier-Spiel, with the movement for each piece given above.

Of note:
Pawns - may advance up to 3 squares on their first move. En-Passant capture is allowed.
Promotion is as in FIDE chess; that is to any piece immdiately upon reaching the far-most rank.

King - may castle as in Courier-Spiel; King moves to Bishop file and Rook moves to Courier file.
Having castled, the King may re-castle in the same direction with the Thane, and under the same strictures but with the initial castling not counting as a move. When re-castling the King goes to the Duke file and the Thane moves to the Rook file.

Notes

Piece Values

Suggested Values are:
PieceValue
Queen12
Rook7
Horseguard, Courier, Duke6
Bishop5
Scout, Thane4
Guard, Knight3
Minister, Viscount, Elephant2
Pawn1

Pieces

One design goal I am now trying to meet with my variants is that they

"should be capable of being played without a computer by using a physical set of board and pieces."

To that end I intend to follow this article, How to Make Some Fairy Chess Pieces, though the wisdom of letting me weild a sharp implement is debatable!


The effect I hope to acheive is illustrated in the following image.
Piece Set

Top row - Rook, Knight, Bishop, King, Queen
Middle Row - Guard, Horseguard, Viscount, Thane, Duke
Bottom Row - Elephant, Scout, Courier, Minister, Pawn


This 'user submitted' page is a collaboration between the posting user and the Chess Variant Pages. Registered contributors to the Chess Variant Pages have the ability to post their own works, subject to review and editing by the Chess Variant Pages Editorial Staff.


By Graeme C Neatham.
Web page created: 2007-06-10. Web page last updated: 2007-06-10