Full Cavalry
The piece called Lancer (also from 8-Piece Chess) replaces each Rook. It will allow for a player to use almost any piece early in the game, while Standard chess tends to allow for rook moves mostly in the end-game.
Setup
The setup is similar to standard chess, except that Lancers replace the Rooks. Each lancer begins the game aiming horizontally toward the king:
Pieces
All Standard chess pieces, except there are no rooks in this game. Lancer: The lancer must move in the direction it is aiming, and after the move, the player may re-orient it (turn it) to any of the major directions (8 total directions if it's in the center of the board, 5 directions on the edge, and 3 available in the corner). You may also leave it aiming in the same direction it just moved, assuming it is not then facing the edge of the board.
A Lancer can jump over any number of friendly units, but it does not necessarily have to jump over anything to move or capture. It cannot jump beyond the first enemy unit in the direction it is facing (it can capture that first enemy piece and can't go any further during that move). A lancer must move, like all other pieces; it cannot re-orient on its current square as a move in itself, with the exception of when a pawn promotes to a lancer (can re-orient during the promotion move).
Rules
Same basic rules and objective of Standard chess, with these differences:
- Pawns can only promote to a non-king piece from this variant, so you cannot promote to a rook. If you promote to a lancer, you may then re-orient the lancer to an available direction to complete your turn/move.
- Castling is legal, under similar restrictions as standard chess. One small difference: Regarding queen-side castling (using White as an example), there can be a friendly unit on b1 such as a White knight, and the queen-side castle would still be legal, assuming c1 and d1 are empty. This is based on the fact that lancers can jump over friendly pieces. Regarding a castling move, that player may re-orient the lancer on its destination square (if desired) to complete his/her turn.
- After moving the lancer to the edge of the board, you may not choose to keep it aiming toward that edge. You must re-orient it toward an actual square on the board. However, if a player did want to attempt stalemate, he or she is allowed to aim toward friendly unit(s) to try for such a stalemate.
Notes
The value of a lancer is very similar to that of a rook in Standard chess. Each lancer is worth about 4.75, and a single lancer can force checkmate (with its own king) against a lone enemy king.
Notation is with an L, and if the lancer re-orients afterward, then the direction is based on compass directions, from White's perpective. i.e. Lxg1nw means lancer takes g1, then re-orients to a northwest direction (diagonally up and to the left for White, and down to the right from Black's perspective) If the lancer does not re-orient after its move or capture, then no direction needs to be mentioned in notation.
Playing over-the-board is very easy; you can use rooks as knights (flipping them upside-down to avoid any confusion of such a familiar shape). The knights can be used as lancers because they are already "facing" a specific direction. Another method is to instead bring in knights from a different-looking chess set to act as lancers.
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By JT K.
Web page created: 2020-09-10. Web page last updated: 2020-09-10