Battery Chess

This is a slightly crazy idea for a Chess variant. After I found this board, I started looking at some setup to use it (I was thinking of a XiangQi variant, but i'll probably keep that for later.)

Then it just hit me. Why not place the four compounds next to the King ?

This variant is a competing variant in the 45/46 squares contest, mainly because there are already too many non-competing variants.

Setup

Pieces

Pawns moves as they do in Standard Chess, including double-move, en-passant, and promotion. They promote to any piece in the starting setup (except a Terror) once they reach the 9th rank. If a pawn is on one of the three central files, he may hold this promotion, so he can promote when reaching 10th rank to a Terror. Pawns may only promote to pieces already captured. If they are one step from promoting, but can't promote because no piece is captured, they can't go to the promotion square; but they, however, can give check. (As in Grand Chess.)

King move as in Standard Chess. No castling.

A Queen is a Q4. That is, it moves like a Queen, but only for four steps. This also applies for the rider-parts in the Marshal, the Archbishop, and the Terror (Q4+N).

Rules

All rules are as in standard chess except what is noted above.

Notes

An interesting setup on this board, using standard pieces, would be :

       +---+---+---+      
10     |:n:| k |:q:|      
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
9  |:r:| n |:b:| b |:r:|  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
8  | p |:p:| p |:p:| p |  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
7  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
6  |   |:::|   |:::|   |  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
5  |:::|   |:::|   |:::|  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
4  |   |:::|   |:::|   |  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
3  |:P:| P |:P:| P |:P:|  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
2  | R |:B:| B |:N:| R |  
   +---+---+---+---+---+  
1      | Q |:K:| N |      
       +---+---+---+      
     a   b   c   d   e    

Pawns promote on the ninth rank unconditionally. There's no castling. All riders are limited to four steps. (Make this setup my non-competing game into the contest.)

--

The fact that riders are only allowed to move as far as four steps is to balance the power between Rooks and Bishops (which, by the board's geometry, are limited to four steps.)

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All the best.

Last revised by H. G. Muller.