Comments by stonemason

Roberto,

Yes, the reason why I decided on ten minutes is that this is a '10'
game. When this contest is over, I'm going to update the page to allow an
arbitrary length of time to be selected.

Like More10, this game is mostly experimental. It is, after all, one of my
first chess variants, since I'm a newcomer here.

-Mason

I'm listening closely to what you all say about the Burakumin and the
starting array. The initial version of the game was created in only a few
days, somewhat hastily. The reason why I did that is I wanted to see what
people thought. Keep making suggestions, because I'm going to submit a
final version later, and I promise it will be a lot better.

I think that the Burakumin is a nice piece idea, but I'm probably going
to remove it. The game is as crowded as possible right now, especially
with the drop rule, which just crowds up everything. Thank you for all
your suggestions.

-Mason

This is probably one of the best games that could be made on a 2*5 board.
Another idea would be to allow pieces to use the line intersections as
well as the squares, and transfer between them somehow. There are 18 line
intersections, however...and 28 cells doesn't sound very good for the
contest.

I do have one complaint, though--it has to do with the 'repetition'
rule. I generally don't like this rule, and here's why. Keeping track of
ALL the positions that have been used up so far is very time-consuming in a
real life game (though thankfully not in a computer match), because you
have to write down everything as you go along. That's why I don't like
Philosopher's Chess very much, even though it won a contest. It's not
that bad with more10, which probably will be fairly short, but I still
prefer games without repetition rules.

Thanks for the information. I have now rated Decima 'Excellent'.

I would probably play the Zillions file right now, if I had ZoG on my
computer. Dang! Why does Zillions of Games have to cost money, though?
I'd download it right away if it were free.

I know it's not generally a good strategy to submit a game without playing
it first, but since I was in a hurry to get a submission in, I kind of
overlooked this fact :(

However, my friend (Andrew Kaczrowski) has volunteered to play a game of
Ladder Shogi with me soon. We'll see how it turns out.

By the way, if the absorbtion rule DOES turn out to be a problem, I can
always change the game to make it more WOtN-like, by saying value pieces
only go up one rank when capturing, and only go down ONE when being
captured (not all the way back down to a merchant).

By the way, the Cricket piece comes from Legend Chess II (see my earlier
post) where it was called a Paladin. The only thing that's been changed
here is its move (now like a King instead of a double Knight jump, as
before).

Charles: I understand all about your wanting to standardize piece names.
However, my own personal opinion on the subject is that this is impossible
to achieve in practice. A chess variant that contains non-orthodox pieces
will only be fully enjoyable if it has some kind of coherent theme (such
as a medieval battle, a modern or futuristic one, or a feud between two
groups of animals). If you use only the 'proper' names for each piece,
then you might end up combining a Dragon (N+P) with a Pancake (see the
Piececlopedia) in the same game. To some designers this would be okay, but
since most of the games I create are themed, I generally don't like to
have mythological creatures and food pieces in the same game. As a result,
at least some name changes would be in order here. This is why I probably
wouldn't give one of my pieces a name like Fortnight (too abstract) even
if that was the 'proper' name for the piece.

I think my game '10 Minute Melee' qualifies for the Hidden Ten
competition because its use of the number ten is more unusual than that of
the other chess variants currently up.

By the way, when will the next 'Large Chess Variant' contest be? I have
co-created a game called 'Legend Chess' which is played on a 16x16
board. I have to get permission from my friend to publish it on these
pages, but it's been proven very enjoyable through playtesting. It would
be a perfect entry for a Large contest, but there hasn't been one of
those for several years. But there have been a lot of small CV
contests--one every year in fact. I think we should have another Large
Chess Variant contest soon.

I think my variant '10 Minute Melee' would qualify for the Hidden Ten
sub-contest because it uses the number 10 in a way that none of the other
CV's submitted to this contest do. Check it out! By the way, you don't
have to play it for exactly 10 minutes, if you don't want to. You can
play it longer or shorter, as time allows.

I just submitted a non-competing entry, which is only loosely based on the
number 10 but which is (in my opinion) my creation that I feel most proud
of. It's non-competing because it's only loosely based on the number 10
(it was created before I was aware of this contest). But it will be a
competing entry in the next Large Chess Variants competition--I sure hope
you guys have the next one soon!

What's interesting about 3D elemental leapers as opposed to 2D ones is
there's a lot more diversity. In two dimensions, each (n:n) or (n:0)
leaper has 4 possible destination squares on an infinite board, arranged
like the vertices of a square. (n:p) leapers (where n and p are not zero
or the same) have 8, forming an octagon.

Finally, chiral (clockwise or counterclockwise) versions of the (n:p)
leapers have 4, arranged like a rotated square. A 'clockwise' knight can
only move to four out of the eight of a full knight, evenly spaced in a
clockwise pattern.

In three dimensions, we have many leapers whose potential destinations
resemble Platonic and Archimedean solids:

(0:0:n)         6 destinations, arranged like the vertices of an octahedron.
(0:n:n)         12 destinations, forming a cuboctahedron.
(n:n:n)         8 destinations, forming a cube.
(n:n:p), w/p>n  24 destinations, forming a rhombicuboctahedron.
(n:n:p), w/p<n  24 destinations, forming a truncated cube.
(0:n:p)         24 destinations, forming a truncated octahedron.
(n:p:q)         48 destinations, forming a truncated cuboctahedron.

And if that wasn't enough, there's MORE! It is possible to cut the
movement possibilities of an (n:p:q) leaper in half, by taking every other
destination away to form a chiral leaper (see above) who has 24
destinations, arranged like a snub cuboctahedron.

So there are 3 different fundamental 'types' of leapers in two
dimensions, and 9 in three dimensions.