Agincourt

By Charles W. Stinson © 

Introduction

I invented and copyrighted a chess variation about 40 years ago. I recently found your group on the internet and would like to submit my variant called "Agincourt".

The reason for the name and the basis for the game come from the battle of Agincourt in the year 1415, where a force of 50,000 armored French knights were defeated by 13,000 English archers. This was the first use of the English longbow as a primary weapon of war and changed the methods of war forever.

Since chess represents warfare in the time period of knights in armour, I added an extra piece which is called the "Archer". The appearance of the "Archer" could be described as a Pawn holding a bow.

Board

The board is the same as a chess board except that it is 10 squares wide by 10 squares long instead of the customary 8 squares wide by 8 squares long.

Setup

Placement of pieces: On each side two additional Pawns are added to the row of Pawns and in the back row the lineup is the same as for chess except the new "Archers" are inserted between the Knight and the Bishop.

Pieces

Pieces are the same as for chess except for the addition of the two new Archers and two additional Pawns.

Rules

Play: Movement of the pieces on the board and general rules are the same as for chess with the addition of the Archers being the only change.

The movement of the "Archers" on the board are similar in pattern to the movement of the Knights (one block to the side and two blocks forward or back, or two blocks to the side and one block forward or back). The exception is that the "Archers" always move on the diagonal, and similar to the Bishops, the Archer on the black square remains on the black squares and the movements of the Archer on the white square remains on the white squares. Also, similar to the knights, the Archer jumps over the other pieces.

Credits