Comments by TonyQuintanilla

<p>Jared, seriously, this is quite a nice game. </p> <p>I really like the idea of static pieces. Although you did not mention it, obviously this is a kind of Chess-Go blend.</p> <p>Apparently the players' boards are a kind of holding area. Would it be possible to expand the battlefield to 41 squares and just drop the randomly pieces directly on the Battlefield each turn? (Although your method would be much more implementable in ZOG (there's that again!)). You could just keep the one special square for the special replacement move. This would give you more room. You could even add more pieces to the setup</p> <p>The tactics of placement on the battlefield could be very interesting. The idea of flipping the ownership of the captured pieces I really like. That will certainly add another layer of complexity to the game, which is useful when you are playing on a small board. In fact, this creates a kind of movement if not of pieces then of piece-structures.</p> <p>I assume that you have considered that the random setup may/will probably create unequal armies. But, the idea of randomness in Chess is interesting in itself as long as it does not overwhelm the pure-strategy aspect of the game.</p> <p>A question: its not immediately clear to me why a Fodder piece should be obligatory on the first move.</p> <p>Final comment, someone please ZFRolize this game!</p>

I didn't mean that each drop would be randomly selected, rather that the randomly selected array would be dropped from outside the board. Thus, the 41 squares could be used for the battle board instead of each player's own setup board. I was not very clear about it, though.

<p>Jared, ok. Point well taken on the board size. Actually, that comment was more musing than anything else. Regarding the little Z man, that's a reference to that little guy with a sword with a big Z on his jacket that's the Zillions icon on their web site and on the CD cover. I was just trying to be amusing, perhaps not so succesfully. Actually, I am intrigued with TT and will have to check their site. RPG's? I don't see the relevance. Overall, nice game.</p> <p>With regard to implementing the game in Zillions, here's a few thoughts. One could use two ?neutral players to drop the original array into the setup boards, randomly selecting from the possible pieces. Upon dropping the pieces could change owners to that of each player. The special 11th piece could have an attribute changed to allow its special move. The moves themselves should be straight forward. The drops would have to search in each move direction and again flip the ownership upon finding a opponent's piece. The win condition might be a little tricky. The winner would be the player that is both stalemated and has the most pieces on the board. Forced passed turns may be required. </p>

Jared, no, I haven't tried TTG yet.

Ok. If it is a cylinder, then 'anonymous' is correct and the game cannot start because the checkmate condition is met from the start. If the board is not a cylinder, then Tony Paletta is right and there is no difference between this game and ortho-Chess, except the 'appearance', but not the geometry, of the board. Perhaps the point is just to have an interesting looking board to play on. Such a large change in the appearance of the board can alter one's conceptualization of the moves and one's thinking about tactics, strategy, etc. That is in itself an interesting variant concept. Any other interpretations?

With regard to the use of ZRFs. ZRFs have been used in previous tournaments. The settings are made to be 'human-human'. Both players share the convenience of Zillions' features, such as convenient graphics, game recording, and, yes, 'the little green dots'. The dots do inform a player about what moves are possible, without advising about which move to make. This implication should be clear to all (or at least both) players from the outset. Of course, it is also possible to create ZRFs that do not enforce any rules, but are simply 'game editors'. This has been done for complicated games, for example. If this is the players' preference, for simplicity's sake I would refer them to the PBeM system on this web site. On the PBeM system it is very simple to create a 'preset' for most Chess variants, including hexagonal variants. It sends e-mail messages with graphics, records logs, allows messaging, provides very nice graphics selection, links to rules, but provides no rules enforcement--try it!

Sorry about the confusion. The redundant broken link has been removed.