10x10 game with some popular pieces

Cannon, chanselor, archbihop, camel... How chess variant with these pieces can be original? Yes, it can be original!

Setup

Board is 10x10, but have 4 additional citadels (camels starts here). They don't play special role in game. jcvewgdwevcj rnbmkqabnr sssssppppp ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- PPPPPSSSSS RNBAQKMBNR JCVEWDGWENCJ S - berolina pawn A - archbishop M - marshal J - camel C - cannon V - bow (vao) E - elephant (see below) W - war machine (see below) D - dragon (see below) G - gryphon (see below)

Pieces

Elephant leaps 1 or 2 squares diagonally.

-------
-x---x-
--x-x--
---E---
--x-x--
-x---x-
-------

War machine leaps 1 or 2 squares orthogonally.

-------
---x---
---x---
-xxWxx-
---x---
---x---
-------

Gryphon moves 1 diagonally, may continue moving orthogonally outwards.

--x-x--
--x-x--
xxx-xxx
---G---
xxx-xxx
--x-x--
--x-x--

Dragon moves 1 orthogonally, may continue noving diagonally.

-x---x-
x-x-x-x
-x-x-x-
--xDx--
-x-x-x-
x-x-x-x
-x---x-

Non-array piece gold general moves 1 orthogonally or 1 diagonally forward.

-----
-xxx-
-x0x-
--x--
-----

Silver general moves 1 diagonally or 1 orthogonally forward.

-----
-xxx-
--0--
-x-x-
-----

You can read descriptions of other non-standart pieces by clicking on thier names.

Rules

To castle, king moves 2 or 3 squares, rook leaps to next square.

Pawns may capture en-passant other pawns, berolina pawns and sergeants (see below). Same rules for berolina pawns and sergeants.

On last rank pawns promotes to friendly rooks, knights, marshals, gryphons, war machines, cannons or OPPONENT'S gold generals.
Berolina pawns promotes to friendly bishops, camels, elephants, bows, dragons, archbishops or OPPONENT'S silver generals.

One rule, wich i forgot to write before: when pawn or berolina pawn promotes to hostile general, opponent cannot move it on next turn. Before i written this, Daniel Roth suggested in comment different variant: when pawn promotes to hostile general, it may be dropped on any free square. Now both rules are optional, you can play with one of them or both.

The reason of promoting to opponent's generals is that capturing them gives bonus.

Pieces, moving both orthogonally and diagonally, only 1 of them in opening setup, (queen, amazone, gorgone, wildbeest, tank, squire, sergeant, plus GOLD and SILVER GENERALS) are special.
If other non-king piece captures one of them, it promotes (not optionally) to it's compound with pieces with orthogonal and diagonal moves swapped, plus camel and knight promotes to wildbeest.
Rooks and bishops promote to queens.
Marshals and archbishops promotes to amazones (amazones moves as rook, bishop and knight).
Gryphons and dragons promotes to gorgones.
Elephants and war machines promotes to squires.
Cannons and bows promotes to tanks.
Pawns and berolina pawns promotes to sergeants (it's very unlikely that sergeant is on pawns starting rank, but if it happens, it can make non-capturing double step in any forward direction, on last ranks promotes to any (friendly) above mentoided special pieces, but NOT to gold and silver generals).
If special piece is captured by king or another special piece, player may promote any piece to respective special piece. If there are only special pieces, that player wons the game.

Stalemated player loses. Bare kings are impossible.
Other outcomes (50 moves without captures and pawn/berolina pawns/sergeants moves, 3-times repetition and others) are not draw. Player with more points on board wins (plus, second player always have 0,5 points, wich covers second move disvantage).
Pieces values (they are used to determine winner of game in "other outcomes", i'm not sure that these values are close to real relative values):
Pawn - 1
Berolina pawn - 1
Sergeant - 2
Camel - 3
Bow - 3
Elephant - 3
Gold general - 3
Silver general - 3
Knight - 4
Cannon - 4
War machine - 4
Bishop - 5
Rook - 6
Wildbeest - 7
Tank - 7
Squire - 7
Archbishop - 8
Dragon - 8
Marshal - 10
Gryghon - 10
Queen - 11
Amazone - 18
Gorgone - 18

Notes

Variant, wich i don't like:
archbishop is replaced with caliph, wich moves as bishop or camel and amazone can move as rook, bishop, knight or camel.
Variant, wich i like:
Knight can move 1 orthogonally, camel can move 1 diagonally (like Omega chess wizard), and wildbeest can move as king. It's possible (and quite logical) to combine these 2 variants.
Another one variant: if king is in opponent's citadel and cannot be captured on next move, king's owner wins.

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 Daniil Frolov.
Web page created: 2010-08-17. Web page last updated: 2010-08-19

Comments

10x10 game with some popular pieces. Missing description (10x10, Cells: 104)

💡📝Daniil Frolov wrote on Wed, Sep 8, 2010 11:07 AM EDT:

I allowed promotion to opponent's gold and silver because capturing one of them will promote piece, wich captures it (for example, if archbishop or dragon can capture silver, it's much better than promotiing berolina pawn to any other piece). Of course, situations, where it's useful are rare. Optional rule, where pawns promotes to captured pieces or hostile general is interesting, but are promoted pieces considered as lost and what if sergeant can't promote if there are no corresponding lost pieces?

Daniel Roth wrote on Wed, Sep 8, 2010 08:34 AM EDT:

It seems that you did not unterstanded me very well. I wanted to know what is the sense behind the promotion of the pawn to an opponent piece. And as an alternative that the silver or gold are still useful when a pawn is promoted to one of them is not becoming an opponent piece but dropped as own piece on one of the free squares as like in Shogi. Ex: White promotes a pawn to a white silver and then dropping it immediately on one of the empty squares.

The only variance where your system works is when players are only allowed to promote to already taken pieces. If there is none available then they are enforced to promote the pawn into an oponent silver or gold. (imagine a pawn takes an opponent rook on the opponents base line and have then to be promoted to a opponents silver or gold.)

But interesting the idea you had with letting the transformed opponent silver or gold being dropped everywhere and not allowed to move next move. Cen nice be used to block a kings escape way.

💡📝Daniil Frolov wrote on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 01:18 PM EDT:

Thanks. Please, look under pawn promotion rules now.

Daniel Roth wrote on Fri, Aug 20, 2010 12:40 PM EDT:Good ★★★★

Nice game but one thing is very confusing to me: Why to promote a pawn to an opponent (!) silver or gold when you can promote the pawns to everything else which is most time better anyway? A different idea is, tht when a pawn is promoted to one of the 2 generals it can then be immediately dropped everywhere on an empty square. This for balancing out a bit that these two pieces are comparable quite weak.

Number of ratings: 1, Average rating: Good, Number of comments: 4