Comments by andy_thomas

a friend of mine had one of these sets... it was called 'battle chess' or
somesuch... for all intents and purposes, it was the same as one pictured
here... with 2 players, you could play 'corners' where each player had
two neighboring colors, or you could play 'criss cross' where each
player controlled two colors opposite one another... you could also play
with 4 players, or with 3 players... there are a lot of possible
variations... once we had 3 players and made the 4th color operable by all
3 of us... we took turns making the 4th army's moves... :)

in any event, like any other variant, this sort of game can sharpen your
wits for FIDE chess by exercising your brain 'outside of the box'... and
perhaps that's at least one of the reasons we play, 'chess variants'...

all in all, i highly recommend 'taurus chess'...

i would think that the five tigers should be able to move sideways from the
beginning... how are they supposed to get across the river otherwise?...
can't blue/black just kind of hover around on the far banks, re-arranging
his pieces and picking the tigers off as they come across?... wouldn't it
be better to let the tigers move sideways from the start?

also, if i understand correctly, the diagram here does indeed show a
checkmate, because even if the king's left advisor goes in front of the
king, the pawn, with it's 2-point movement would simply 'turn the
corner' and 'boom'... king taken... that ability to move 1 sideways and
one forward (or vice versa)... seems fairly powerful for trapping the
black/blue king in the palace....

'T=Tank: Moves one space like a king. It can capture as a queen, but
without moving (rifle capture). Can't capture a piece right next to it.
It can push pieces of either colors in a row, column, diagonal. Pieces
pushed off the board are put onto your bench.'

ok... i understand how it captures, but how does the 'push' work
exactly?

'Pieces on your bench cannot be dropped like shogi, they can only be
placed by moving a pawn past the end of the board. '

so i move a pawn off of the back of the board... where is a piece from the
bench then placed?... at the last sqaure that the now-exited pawn had
occupied?

in AIGO, perhaps the knights' pawns should be dispensed with altogether.
in my opinion this would give better 'synergy' between the combined FIDE
and xiang qi varieties of chess. then there would be no rule about whether
those pawns could move 2 initially, because the knights' pawns wouldn't
exist; and each side would have 16 pieces, as each side does in both FIDE
and xiang qi. plus, the cannons would then be able to attack the
opponent's knights, as it is in xiang qi. currently, AIGO with the
cannons inserted at n2 and knights pawns starting at 3, gives the game a
'cramped' look on the 8x8 board.

thanks for the review christine... i'm happy you find this variant as
interesting as i do... as you know, i had been fiddling with larry's
superlative zillions implementation of american chess, in order to try and
create, 'american blitz chess'... what with 2 boards side by side (22x9)
and upwards of 50 pieces per side!... there were 2 and 3 moves per side in
each turn... well, 'american blitz chess' is still kind of a dream... but
in the meantime i stumbled across the 'marseilles' chess variant whereby
with a FIDE setup the players would get two moves apiece per turn, the
latest version having a sequence of 'white black black white'
('marseilles balanced, invented in 1992')... so i thought i would try
this with standard american chess as a way of creating a restrained
(one-board) version of 'american blitz chess'

anyway, if anyone is playing american chess, if you add this code to the
end of the .zrf file:

(variant
	(title 'American Chess - Marseilles')
	(turn-order Blue Red Red Blue)
)

then you can play this thrilling ('marseilles') variant 'through'
american chess... trust me... this is what american chess was meant to
be!... even more pressure packed than before!... maybe it's the perfect
chess variant!... lol... :) ... well at least from a certain artistic and
emotional standpoint... ;)

--He also suggested that stronger pieces might make a better game if placed
on a larger board. 
-

that's a good obervation coming from a 6-year old...

have you told him about 'gun/rifle' type pieces?... ones that don't
move during capture but instead 'shoot' a piece from several squares
away?