The Chess Variant Pages

Chess-Battle

This is a game from the Soviet-Union, invented in 1933 by A.S. Yurgelevich. It was described in Pritchard's Encyclopedia of Chess Variants.

Rules

The game is played on a board of 128 squares, obtained by adding to all four sides of a regular eight by eight board a strip of three by eight (or eight by three) squares. Players have each twenty-four pieces: a headquarter, a bomber, a tank, two guns, two cavalry, two machine-guns, and fifteen soldiers.

Opening setup

The opening setup is as follows. Player colors are red and white.

      GCMBHMCG
      SSSSTSSS
   ...SSSSSSSS...
   ..............
   ..............
   ..............
   ..............
   ..............
   ..............
   ...SSSSSSSS...
      SSSSTSSS
      GCMBHMCG

Here, G=gun, C=cavalry, M= machine gun, B=bomber, H=headquarter, T=tank, S=soldier (or warrior). Squares are colored. The corners down-left are black.

Moves

The headquarter moves as a king, and also plays the role of king.

The bomber moves and takes as a queen, but may also jump over one friendly piece (but not over more than one friendly piece per turn).

The tank moves one or two squares horizontal or vertical. The tank cannot be taken by a machine-gun, cavalry, or soldier.

When the gun moves, it cannot take, and moves as a king one square in an arbitrary direction. Guns take by shooting. In this case, the gun does not move, but can take one hostile piece that is at most five squares away in a horizontal, diagonally forward, or vertically forward direction. A gun can shoot only one piece in a turn. Shooting counts as a whole turn.

The machine-gun moves as the gun: it cannot take when moving and goes one square in an arbitrary direction. The machine-gun also takes by shooting; however the machine-gun may shoot in all eight directions (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal), but only at most three squares far. Again, when shooting, the machine-gun doesn't move; shooting counts as a whole turn and at most one piece is shot in the turn. Also, one may not shoot over another piece, i.e., when the gun or machine-gun shoots another piece, the squares in between should be empty.

The cavalry has a number of moves, resembling the moves of a knight. When moving a cavalry, the player may make a normal knight move (1 square in one horizontal or vertical direction, and two in the other direction), or make a move of 1 square in one (horizontal or vertical) direction and three in the other direction, or make a move of 2 squares in one (horizontal or vertical) direction and three in the other direction. So, when a cavalry would be on a normal chess board on the square a1, it can move to b2, b3, c2, c4, d2, and d3.

A soldier has two possible moves: as a king, i.e., one square in an arbitrary direction, or when it is on a white square, it may move (without jumping over another piece) two squares in an arbitrary direction (horizontal, vertical, diagonal). However, a soldier can only take a piece, when he moves one square horizontally, or forward, i.e., he cannot take when going two squares or when moving backwards.

Other rules

Soldiers do not promote. Instead, when a soldier moves to the last rank of the board (the rank that contains in the opening setup the opponents headquarter), then the player owning the soldier, removes the soldier, and one piece of the opponent, but not the headquarter, from the board.

Purpose of the game is to mate the opponents headquarter.

WWW page created: December 4, 1995. Last modified: February 16, 1996.