Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

Viking Chess

By Tomas Forsman

Introduction

Viking Chess was designed to enter the Chess Variant Pages' 84 Spaces Contest. Viking Chess is set up to be more aggressive then ordinary Chess, which was a challange to do on a bigger board. The placement of the pieces have been designed to allow strategy as well as fast action. Even though games can last a long time, they are filled with action from move one.

Board and Setup

Viking Chess is played on a board with 12 files and 7 ranks. The pieces are set up with both sides starting on the same side of board.

   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
7  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
6  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
5  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
4  |   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|   |:::|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
3  |:::| P |:P:| P |:P:|   |:::| p |:p:| p |:p:|   |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
2  | R |:P:| N |:N:| P |:P:| p |:p:| n |:n:| p |:r:|
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
1  |:R:| B |:K:| Q |:B:| P |:p:| b |:q:| k |:b:| r |
   +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
     a   b   c   d   e   f   g   h   i   j   k   l

White:

Pawns: b2 b3 c3 d3 e3 e2 f2 f1
Knights: c2 d2
Bishops: b1 e1
Rooks: a1 a2
Queen: d1
King: c1

Black:

Pawns: g1 g2 h2 h3 i3 j3 k3 k2
Knights: i2 j2
Bishops: h1 k1
Rooks: l1 l2
Queen: i1
King: j1

Rules

Viking Chess is conducted by rules of FIDE Chess, except that:

Both sides' Pawns move in the same direction, and all Pawns promote normally upon reaching the (same) 7th rank.
There is no Pawn double-move or en passant capture.
There is no castling.

Computer Play

There is an implementation of Viking Chess for Zillions of Games. You can download it here:

vikingchess.zip

Written by Tomas Forsman, converted from ZRF to HTML by Peter Aronson.

WWW page created: September 26th, 2002.