Game Reviews by PeterAronson

Immobilizers? How about Polypiece Ultima or Polypiece Rococo -- the way a piece moves doesn't change, but how it captures changes . . .

Is there any generally accepted value for a Cardinal/Archbishop/Janus on an 8 x 8 board? The value 7 Pawns comes to mind, but I'm not sure from where. Possibly it's 1.5 Rooks, or the average value of a Rook and a Queen using the Spielmann values (4.5 and 8.5).

This looks like fun, Fergus. I've been wondering what this was ever since it appeared in the PBeM system a year or two years ago. I particularly like that even with the advanced Pawn array, all of the Pawns are protected in the opening setup -- not easy.

It'd probably be too powerful, but it might have been amusing to have made the Dragon a Nightrider too, making it a Rocket-rider or Squirrel-rider. With the current definition I would think it would be rather weak in the endgame.

I love to see a game with a solid theme where all of the mechanics follow from the theme. It doen't hurt that it's funny, either!

Nice idea! With only a small change, this has a big effect, but the result is still Chess.

Neat idea! Other divisions of the board come to mind, such as center vs edges (either way), or the middle four ranks are greener, but the starting ranks are not (talk about a battle for the center!). <p> I'm not sure that all of the CWDA armies enhance the same[*]. For example, if I were to play this game, my first thought was to take the Nutty Knights (my personal favorite CWDA army at the moment, even though I have a better record with the Remarkable Rookies), and to give them better retreating moves. So the Charging Rook would get the Barc enhancement, the Charging Knight the Dabbabah enhancement, and the Colonel the Alfil enhancement. My experience is that ability to move back twice as fast would be invaluable for that army. <p> [*] Of course, I've also concluded that for casual level players, the sort of difference I'm talking about doesn't make a big difference.

I like the exchange move. I've been thinking about it -- when, in play would it make sense to use? It actually does two useful things: change the Bishop's color <strong>and</strong> moves the Knight toward the center. I think I may add another variant to Not-Particularly-New Chess with this move. <p> This leads to the interesting question: is better for a player who has the choice to have their Bishops on the same or different color? In one case they can double up, but in the other case they can have a more general effect on the game. <p> This game also resembles <a href='http://play.chessvariants.com/erf/ActiveCh.html'>Active Chess</a>, another 9x8 game with two Queens, but a very different array.

Jared, I'm working on a ZRF for this game, and want to double check something. In the standard <a href='../shogi.html'>Shogi</a> rules: <blockquote><i> A Pawn may not be dropped onto a file containing a non-promoted Pawn. </i></blockquote> And <blockquote><i> A checkmate may not be performed by the drop of a Pawn. A King may be checked by dropping a Pawn, but only if the drop does not result in an immediate checkmate. </i></blockquote> I assume these rules apply in <b>Ryu Shogi</b> too?

An amusing idea! <hr> Another possible approach to capturing in this game (combined with pictorial check) is <strong>aggressive castling</strong>. You may castle with a piece as long as no friendly pieces or unmoved Pawns are between you and it. If either piece moved by the castling move lands on an opposing piece, the piece landed on is captured. <p> This isn't much good for capturing pieces on the edge or adjacent pieces, but it does allow some captures, and the goal is still pictoral check.

I have a question about the Spearman, too. Can the Spearman move two forward <strong>without</strong> capturing any enemy piece? Or does the two square forward move require an opposing piece to kill on one of the two diagonally forward squares?

While this certainly looks like an interesting game, I find the statement '<i>Quangtrung Chess (10th edition) is 100% original</i>' a bit curious. If you look at the BCVS (British Chess Variants Society) page <a href='http://www.bcvs.ukf.net/gvcm.htm'>All the King's Men</a>, you see that the Quangtrung <b>Boat</b> is described there as a <b>Sea-Rook</b> or <b>Triton</b>, the Quangtrung <b>Cannon</b> as a <b>Ski-Rook</b> and the Quangtrung <b>Horse</b> as a <b>Moa</b>. And I'm fairly sure that the Quangtrung <b>Infantry</b> shows up in some large Shogi variants. And while the restriction on the 2nd move of a turn capturing is new to <em>me</em>, there are a lot of variations on Balanced Double-Move Chess, and that may not be new, either. <p> And none of that really matters. What makes a game fresh and new is not that the elements in it are new, but that it plays differently than existing games, that the experiance of playing it is in some important way different from playing any existing game. I see the comment: <blockquote><i> 'Every facet of the game is original. I am telling this so everyone will be assured that their time will not be wasted if they decided to learn more about the game.' </i></blockquote> As misguided -- what makes a game worth learning about is not complete novelty, but that it is enjoyable to play.

This is a strange and very mobile game, where pieces ghost around freely, and a Pawn's life is not a happy one. Flamingos and Flaming Cranes in particular have a short way with threatening Pawns -- the Pawn moves up, and is pecked, and that's that.

A minor question -- if a Crane has not moved, but pecks at a piece from its starting place, can it still castle? Also, when castling long, would a piece at b2/8 still block castling?

It's always neat when you can combine two ideas that already exist, and produce something new and interesting! I like the solo Pawn capture restriction. Tony Quintanilla and I have been playing a version of Relay Chess by e-mail lately, and it started out as a bloodbath, and by move 25 or so there were no Pawns left. <p> <hr> <h4>Wilder Mildewed Zero Relay Chess</h4> I'll take a stab at this. The rules have two parts, of course. <p> <ol> <li><b>Wilder</b>: Wild Zero Relay Chess plus Pawns <em>can</em> promote using relay powers, and Kings give (but do not gain) relay powers.</li> <p> <li><b>Mildewed</b>: pieces standing still too long in crowded squares start growing mildewed, and lose the ability to relay their powers. Any square that contains two or more pieces continuously for three or more turns is marked with a mildew chip. Pieces in squares with a mildew chip do not relay their powers. A mildew chip is removed at any time that the square contains no pieces.</li> </ol> <p> <b>Archoniclastic Zero Relay Chess</b> would also be an interesing game, and would not have the colorbound piece issue that regular <a href='../boardrules.dir/archoniclastic-chess.html'>Archoniclastic Chess</a> has.

This looks interesting! A question about promotion: once a Pawn promotes to a General, can the resulting General then exit the camp and reenter, promoting to Grand Vizier? Also, if a Pawn or General rides a magic carpet square to the opponent's back two ranks, does that result in promotion?

A couple of questions: <p> <ul> <li>'<i>Leapers may jump over the missing fields in the corners, but riders can't ride thru.</i>' I assume that leap-riders can pass over missing squares as long as they don't need to land on any of them?</li> <p> <li> If I understand correctly, the Quintessence has 16-paths; that is, two versions each of all 8 Camel-rider paths. Do I have that right? </ul>

This looks interesting, but there's one point of the rules I find confusing: you talk both about the King being checkmated -- which is generally used to mean an inescapable threat to capture but not actual capture -- and being captured. Which is it?

Now that I've played this (Tony Quintanilla and I recently finished an e-mail game), I can say that it plays very nicely, but that the movement of the pieces takes some getting used to. This is not helped by the abstract design of the pieces, but I like the way they look so much that I'd rather not trade them for more helpful ones.

This is a neat idea! I particularly like the care that was taken to avoid allowing indirect checks by double-moves. (IE, the King being in check by a combination of both the opposing player's moves.) <p> I'll note pedantically that while this game might have been inspired by Alice Chess, it doesn't have the defining (to me) characteristic of Alice Chess that moving forces a change between boards. I would describe this more as a two level 3D Chess variant. <p> Chancellor and Marshall are both common names for Rook+Knight. The common name for Bishop+Knight is Cardinal, although Archbishop and Princess are used in a fair number of games as well (although Archbishop is also used for other Bishop variants). <p> A game with 6x7 square boards, double-moves and swapping pieces? This game vaguely resemble a distant cousin of <a href='..//42.dir/mulligan-stew.html'>Mulligan Stew Chess</a>.

A neat concept for light game! A few questions: <p><ul><li> Is it allowed for a wormhole to form such that it causes a stalemate? </li><p><li> Assume a white Pawn on a7, and a wormhole on a8 -- if the white Pawn moves forward, does it end up on a1 without promoting? If so, can it doublemove from a1? What if it moves to a2? </li><p><li> Can a wormhole be <em>removed</em> in such a way as to put a King in check? </li></ul>

Actually, this game can be found in the standard Chess ZRF that comes with Zillions.

After playing around with this game a bit, it seems to me that the Great Pajamas are somewhat disadvantaged: the Box can pull out unlimited Bats, as long as the one per column rule is followed, and the Pajamas can keep pulling out Elephants, as long as there is only one of your color on the board at a time, but once the Great Pajamas have pulled out the Great Elephant, all they can do is generate Dust Bunnies and Dust Demons. It doesn't seem fair. <p> Perhaps the Great Pajamas should also be able to pull out an Investigator and/or a Cook. Cooks, as we know from Cheskers, are Camels (Long Knights). An Investigator would be a Nemesis -- a piece that moves like a King, but only towards the opposing Royal piece. Now, in Captain Spalding Chess that would be too powerful, so perhaps it could have a Nemesis that moves like a Wazir, but can only makes moves that would leave it closer to the opposing Box. If an Investigator is captured, it may be pulled out by the Great Pajamas again.

Nicely fluidly weird. Normally leapers greater than maybe (3,0) or (2,1) don't work on a board this size, but with <strong>everything</strong> but the King/General and Pawns/Sergeants leaping, this isn't the usual problem. <p> One thing I noticed is that it is very common for Pegasi to be exchanged, which is unfortunate as they are interesting pieces. It might be nice to treat them as like Lions in Chu Shogi (or Golems in Golem Chess, which borrowed the idea from Chu Shogi) and not let them be exchanged easily.

I do like to see a good Chess variant with dice once in a while. So many variant designers and players have an attitude about anything with a random element which I suspect stems from delusions about the predictablity of the real world.

This is a nice idea, but the pieces you call Hobbits have been around for a while. For example, John Williams Brown called them Stewards, and used them in <a href='../large.dir/contest/cenchess.html'>Centennial Chess</a>; however, this is a nice use of them. <p> As for the 9x9 game, I notice that all four Bishops are on White. Now, some people like it like that -- consider Gabriel Maura's game of <a href='../large.dir/modern.html'>Modern Chess</a> which also has four Bishops on the same color -- but you still might want to consider something like Carlos Cetina's <a href='../varvar.dir/bcr.html'>Bishop's Conversion Rule</a>, when one Bishop has to change color on its first move.