Game Reviews by Johnny Luken

I would have to extend my criticism of Crazyhouse to this game, and echo Mr Dukes sentiments.

While I like the concept, I don't think its an actually good game.

My proposed amendment of the drop in rule (pieces are played in with non capture from the spot they were captured) likely brings an improvement here as well.

Non immediate promotion is also unsatisfactory; why not allow pieces to promote immediately on rotationally symmetric opposite squares?

To me these are the most logical ways of importing Shogis mechanics into the more energetic game of FIDE.

A classic example of a game whose popularity exceeds its actual quality.

The addition of conversion to chess is a worthwhile pursuit, but the brainless mechanic of dropping a piece wherever you want, is the least imaginitive possible implementation.

More specifically the freedom to drop pieces produces a higher level of convergence in the game tree versus more restricted implementations, reducing strategic connotations of moves. Piece drops in Crazyhouse are always done on primitive grounds, check blocks, pawn promotion threat etc.

That it merely borrows this from Shogi is not a defense; those games are 1) somewhat aged, 2) purposely designed towards such a mechanic.

Were Chess capture performed by nonreplacement, pieces could simply be converted immediately and this would likely work well.

As it is, I believe there are two main implementations.

1. allow pieces of like colour to occupy common space with immediate conversion. This is not satisfactory as it simply allows the second player in a trade cycle to gain all the pieces.

2. my proposition. Captured piece is immediately converted, continues to occupy its cell and can be played on as usual. However it may not be captured at this point, and may not capture on its first move after conversion. 

On playtesting this idea, I further propose that converted piece must wait one turn before being played into a game-this avoids attritional cycles with little change to the board.

Nice concept and homage to the original.

The "wrong reaper" is clever and not something I had thought of.

One thing maybe missing from the set is to change to the king from anti king chess that can't be captured, but requires constant enemy threat.

As mentioned the widow is essentially an immobiliser and the "independent" is overpowered, though the presence of the anti king would makes it a more acceptable piece.

Also in the spirit of the game would be to have a "mobiliser" type that for example allows double move to adjacent friendlies.

A pretty playable subvariant would be with both boards full, and ordinary moves, starting and ending on the same board, by necessity, legal.

You could even adapt the mechanic for higher dimensional games, with layers of boards, with the rule that for a piece to move legally from one board to another, the move would have to be legal on all intermediate boards aswell...