Check out Janggi (Korean Chess), our featured variant for December, 2024.

This page is written by the game's inventor, Tony Quintanilla.

Tiled Squares Chess

By Tony Quintanilla

 

Introduction

"Tiled Squares Chess" has evolved from my "Chameleon Chess" and "Shifting Sands Chess", particularly the idea that the properties of the squares affect the powers of the pieces. Ralph Betza's "Shifted Square Chess" and "More Shifted Square Chess" and Gavin King's "Motorotor" also suggested that the board is not immutable.

Setup

The initial setup is identical to FIDE Chess, except that the 3rd through 6th ranks of the board have no tiles--that is, the board is a void between the piece arrays!

Pieces

The standard FIDE pieces are used.

Rules

All the normal rules of Chess apply with the following exceptions:

The image below illustrates how to drop a Tile.

The image below illustrates how to drop an Anti-Tile.

That is, pieces cannot land on a non-existent part of the board that has not yet been created. As they make these moves, they may move over non-existent parts of the board, just not land there. Remember that all pieces are on Tiles, so capture is never affected  by this rule.

The image below illustrates the Queen's movement capabilities. This image shows the Tiles dropped by White outlined in white and those dropped by Black outlined in black. However, for the purposes of movement, it does not matter which player dropped the Tile. 

 

The only piece that ignores this rule is the King. Note that the King may not create and move onto a Tile on a space where it will be threatened by an opposing piece, even though that space is not currently threatened because it has no Tile. The King's movement capabilities are illustrated below.

The Knight may not land on an Anti-Tile, but may leap over Anti-Tiles. The King ignores the Anti-Tile altogether. As shown above, the King moves wherever he wishes and creates a Tile as he goes and leaves a Tile upon exiting a space. The Knight's movement capabilities are illustrated below.

In other words, in some respects a player can be said of own certain Tiles. This ownership, however, has no affect on movement, only on the ability to subsequently remove that Tile from the board. Ownership in the above illustrations is designated by a white or black border.

Playing Tips

Tiled Squares Chess is most different during the opening and early middle game. As the board become more filled in it becomes progressively more like FIDE Chess, although removing Tiles and dropping Anti-Tiles can change this trend.

The initial moves in the game should be focused on dropping Tiles where your initial moves will be made. Of course, your opponent can also make use of your Tiles.

Adding an Anti-Tile is a powerful option to block certain ranks, files and diagonals, however, bear in mind that once dropped Anti-Tiles cannot be removed except by the King moving to an Anti-Tile.

Notes

Again, the idea of creating the board as one goes can be applied to almost any Chess variant, with various board sizes, board configurations, rules and piece arrays

Computer Play

If you have Zillions of Games installed on your computer, you can play this game. Download the ZRF as the below link. 

The images on this page were created using this ZRF.

Equipment

Standard Chess equipment can be used. Some kind of designation to indicate squares that have Tiles, no Tiles, or anti-Tiles is needed.