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

This page is written by the game's inventor, Florin Lupusoru.

Pyramid Chase

While researching hexagonal chess variants I realised that a pyramidal variant can better be played on a hexagonal grid rather than a square grid. This game is played on a 33 ranks and 33 files pyramid with 561 hexagons.  

Setup

The initial setup looks like this:

In the initial setup the black Queen swaps places with the black King. 

Pieces

Each player has a regular chess set of 16 pieces. Each piece moves in the way described bellow but their movements are restricted when moving forward (see bellow the Power Level). 

King

The King moves one cell orthogonally in any direction. 

Queen

The Queen moves orthogonally in any direction any number of cells. The Queen can also move like a Knight. 

Rook

The Rook moves orthogonally in any direction any number of cells. 

Bishop

The Bishop moves orthogonally forward and backwards any number of cells, but not sidewise. 

Knight

The Knight makes a 2-forward+1-forward-sideways orthogonal move, as in Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. This includes jumping over pieces. 

Pawn

Pawns move and capture orthogonally forward up to two cells per turn.  

Rules

Objective

The goal of the game is to reach the top of the pyramid. The first King to reach the top wins. A player can also win by checkmating the enemy King along the way. 

Power levels

Each rank of the pyramid represents a level of power. The bottom of the pyramid represents the lowest power level, while the top, the highest. Regardless of how they move pieces are not allowed to advance more than one square in front of the highest advanced piece. There are no such restrictions on the lower ranks allowing pieces to attack each others from behind. 

Additional rules

 

Notes

Due to its size, the pyramid is streched a little bit. I hope that's not a big issue. 


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 Florin Lupusoru.

Last revised by Florin Lupusoru.


Web page created: 2024-02-17. Web page last updated: 2024-02-24