Glacial Shift

By Jared B. McComb

Introduction

(If you are not familiar with Icehouse pieces, you may want to look here before reading the rest of this page.)

Setup

Nomenclature and Movement

Royal Pawns have a one-space orthogonally forward move. Royal Knights gain the additional power of moving one space diagonally, and Royal Generals may move in any of these five directions for any distance.

Center Pawns have a one-space diagonally forward move. Center Knights gain the additional power of moving one space orthogonally, and Center Generals may move in any of these six directions for any distance.

Left Pawns may move any distance orthogonally forward. Left Knights gain the additional power of moving any distance in the other three orthogonal directions, and Left Generals may also move one space diagonally.

Right Pawns may move any distance diagonally forward. Right Knights gain the additional power of moving any distance in the other two diagonal directions, and Right Generals may also move one space orthogonally.

Rules

The goal of each player, as stated above, is to eliminate the other three by checkmate. However, no piece is subject to the rules of check unless it is the only Royal piece inside its owner's quadrant. Therefore you are not allowed to move all of your Royal pieces out of your quadrant. It is also possible to check a player by reducing his total on-board forces to a single Royal piece (in his quadrant). This is called bare check and it carries with it a rather nice bonus for the checking player if they are able to carry out mate with it (which they usually are).

If a player is put in check, the turn immediately passes to them. If more than one player is put in check simultaneously, turn passes to the player whose normal move would fall closer to the player who just moved. For example, if Yellow checked both Green and Red simultaneously, the turn would pass to Green. After the turn, if Red was still in check, the turn would immediately pass to Red, unless Green also checked Blue on his turn, in which case the move would go to Blue instead, and then Red afterwards. In other words, with turn always going clockwise, checked players always take move priority. Perpetual check is not allowed; no player may ever recreate a previous board position. Counter-check is not allowed, either.

Because of the nature of check in this game, it may be averted in any of these four ways:

1. Capture the checking piece.
2. Move the checked piece out of the way.
3. Drop a piece in the way of the checking piece.
4. Move or drop another Royal piece into your quadrant.
5. (Bare check only) Drop another piece anywhere on the board.

If a player cannot avert check on their turn, they are mated by the live player who last attacked them (not necessarily the player who last moved) and the following things happen:

1. The mated piece is turned upright, and can no longer be moved or captured. If it was a promoted piece, the largest component is turned upright and the others are sent to the mating player's hand.
2. The mating player receives all of the mated player's in-hand pieces and places them in his own hand.
3. The mating player receives all of the mated player's pieces which are the same color as the mating player, as well as all the mated player's pieces which are in the same attacker's quadrant (except for the upright one, if applicable), and places them in his hand. In the case of promoted pieces, the player delivering mate takes only the largest components and places the others in the public stash.
4. All the mated player's other pieces go to the public stash.
5. In the case of bare mate, the mating player then takes all of the pawns from the public stash and places them in his hand.
6. Turn passes to the player after the mated player, unless of course there is another player in check.

Promotion and Demotion

If a promotion is not possible, due to a lack of correct pieces in the public stash, then the piece stays the same and cannot be promoted on a later turn. It is therefore possible to immobilize pawns by moving them to the far end of the board when there are no promotions available. Generals do not ever promote.

When a player captures another player's promoted piece, only the smallest piece inside it is taken into their hand, and all the others are returned to the public stash. This is called demotion of captured pieces, and pieces only demote when captured.

Acknowledgments

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