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This page is written by the game's inventor, Doug Chatham.

Los Alamos Extinction Chess With Bunkers

Introduction
Setup
Pieces
Rules
Notes
Computer Play

Introduction

Los Alamos Extinction Chess With Bunkers is an entry in the 44-Square Variant Contest. As the name indicates, the game is a blend of Los Alamos Chess and Extinction Chess, with some additional squares added to qualify it for the contest.

Setup

The board is a 6x6 board, with a 2x2 board ("White's Bunker") underneath the squares c1,d1,c2, and d2 and another 2x2 board ("Black's Bunker") underneath the squares c5,d5, c6, and d6. Pieces are placed on the 6x6 board just as in Los Alamos Chess.

Pieces

The pieces are the same as in Los Alamos Chess, except each piece has the additional power to move directly up and down.

Rules

The rules are those of Los Alamos Chess (basically, regular chess with no castling, no en passant capturing, and no double-step pawn moves) except as given below:
  1. The objective is like that of Extinction Chess: a player wins by capturing all the opponent's Pawns, or the opponent's Rooks, or the opponent's Knights, or the opponent's King(s) or Queen(s).
  2. As in Extinction Chess, there is no check or checkmate.
  3. Each piece on a bunker square can move up to the square directly above it, if the move is otherwise legal (e.g. the destination square is not occupied by a friendly piece).
  4. Each piece on a square directly above a bunker square can move down to that bunker square, if the move is otherwise legal.
  5. The bunker squares underneath each side's 6th rank are part of that rank for the purpose of pawn promotion.
  6. As in Extinction Chess, a pawn that reaches the promotion rank can be promoted to King.
  7. The bunkers are not connected to each other, so it's not possible to make a move from one bunker to another.
  8. When recording moves, indicate each bunker square with the prefix V. For instance, the square underneath c1 would be Vc1.

Notes

Originally the Extinction Chess aspects were not part of this game. Then I discovered that the bunkers worked too well in protecting the King from checkmate: Zillions had two Queens and a King against a lone King in its bunker and couldn't get checkmate. Oh the embarrassment!

Computer Play

If you have Zillions of Games installed on your computer, you can play this game. Download file: losalamoswithbunkers.zip.