Comments by ultimatecoolster

How about a Chess variant played on the edges of a hexagonal board?

Forgetful Chess: Pieces start out with their normal moves. If a piece does
not move in a certain way for X turns, it 'forgets' how to move that
way. Multi-move variant recommended.

Tile Qi - XQ played on squares of a 9x10 board with all Palace pieces
removed and all Palace squares removed bar the Generals' starting
squares, which function and move in the same way as XQ Generals, but can
additionally have friendly pieces 'piggy-back' on it, moving with it as
it moves. Pieces cannot move onto squareless spaces, but can pass them.

One down. Your score, Mr. Duke?

No, you are wrong, Mr. Duke. The truly essential piece is my Gorilla, which
moves 4 King moves, capturing up to one, passing up to one piece. The
Falcon is obviously derived from this, as it only moves thrice, cannot
reverse, and cannot jump. The Knight is derived from it also, for it jumps
for the entire journey, whereas my Gorilla jumps for one step. The Rook and
Bishop extend its steps. It is moreover a superset because it can capture
on any step, rather than the zenith. If you could muster an iota of
intelligence, you could see this for yourself.

Might I mention that I have, in 2006, already filed a patent for all
Chessoid games featuring a piece named Gorilla. We have, however, been
unsuccessful at making the patent retroactive. All may use the Gorilla in
commercial games, though at my discretion.

Surely you have rendered the Gorilla a jest, my dear George? 'Twas a mere
mockery of your avian conceit.

CONTEST TIME!

OBJECT: Design a game with the best use of an unsymmetrical board!
More points for very unsymmetrical boards, sparse boards, boards with other unusual features, and intuitive rules that govern movement so as the unsymmetrical board is not a hindrance. Technically normal boards where the board is hippogonally connected and all the pieces are Knightoids, etc. don't count!


Deadline is April 2nd!

No, but that sounds interesting.

I believe that the solution to the dying Chess would not be an entirely new
 game, but something that would exactly solve the problems of Chess. Let us
determine what is wrong with Chess, not simply old.

Well, what I did was just look at some random variants, picked out some
interesting things from them, and worked a variant around those. If there
are too many special features, I try to blend them together, especially
where common points arise. (Some people don't do this, resulting in some very ugly variants.) Perhaps you can create Chimera #2, Rich.

To speak as George Duke:

Rider is mono-axial Class in Phylum Planar.

The Kingdom is Chessoids; displacement-captors with no effects, in the Domain Wargames.

Moorider can be Maorider+Moarider or what is called 'multi-path',
correct? Multi-path is the father of planar, and grandfather of
rider/slider. Leaper/stepper is the father of multi-path, descending as
movement becomes more restricted...

Multi-positional, I reckon, Mr. Duke, is an entirely different thing from
the rest, which can be established in my said hierarchy. It is like a
sub-species, as any piece can have such quality and the rest is the same.
Now that the hierarchy is established, also, I wonder what new cousins
pieces could have.

Leaper/Stepper
   ___|___
  |       |
 ??? Multi-Path (must have at least one clear path)
       ___|___
      |       |
     ???    Planar (must have all clear paths)
           ___|___
          |       |
         ??? Rider/Slider (must travel along one axis only)

http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/conversion-chess

Further syncretism. Games of this sort can be considered 'themed' and a
good method of generating themed games is to combine similar points of
existing variants.

While there are previous pieces, Duke, I submit my own in a line of all too
little used pieces with effects derived from personality:

Fox is cowardly. When attacked, he will defend himself. Fox is clever.
When another piece is attacked, he can move to any square attacking the
attacker. Dog is loyal. He must defend. Dog is aggressive. He must capture
otherwise, and attacked pieces are immobilized. Ox is stubborn. He will not
stop moving on a path, or standing still. Ox is industrious. He will keep
moving on a path, capturing any pieces. Frog is benign. He does not do much
when attacked. Frog is talented. He will do much when not attacked.

I bring to you the Bodhisattva Pawn. Normally Pawns will promote as soon as
possible. However, the Bodhisattva Pawn may instead wait on the last rank,
allowing any Pawn to either move to his starting square or move any amount
of squares along the path he took to promotion before being obstructed if
either on that path or his starting square.

Maybe the Queen is easier to understand when learning Chess when it moves more like a King, because kings and queens pair in real life. In Shatranj, the corresponding piece is called a general, and generals do not pair with kings so much. In Xiang Qi, the king moves only orthogonally, maybe to pair better with the diagonal moves. Kings are really a difficult thing to choose, because it is the center of Chess and you want it to represent most pieces to   make different pieces at least seem important even if weaker.

I don't think the Queen is a more intuitive piece personally, but most people I teach Chess have problems with Knights more, and also then Cardinals. Many Chess players perceive some balance between orthogonal and diagonal, and sometimes also Knights. Really diagonal is just orthogonal on a different, bigger board and Knights are diagonal but use 2 different diagonals together that make them not colorbound.

I've had an idea about static move sets which pieces on that square can
move as for a while. However, this in practice is rather boring as the
positions are always essentially the same, just with different colors or
simple modifiers like one square or infinite. Then, I got this idea:

What if the movements were separate from the pieces, but moved
themselves?

As if the movements were normal people, leading their dull lives, when
they become vessels in a fight between foreign spirits...

I have chosen to post all my new games on the CV Wiki at
http://chessvariants.wikidot.com/ in order to have more flexibility. This
will be a new thread for alerting updates to my games.

What about the idea of mixed AI? A computer Chess player could use multiple
AI programs for its moves.

I define a reduced CV as one that plays on a smaller board or with less
pieces than usual, but retains most of the original properties in some
form.

REDUCED ROOKS (Recommended for 6x8 variants and variants with extra pieces
on 8x8.)

Everyone knows that Rooks are endgame pieces, right? And so are Pawns?
What if we simplified this by combining them?

How about Pawns that project Rook paths, but only move to the ones shared
by at least 1/2 of them? At maximum, 4 Pawns can move like Rooks but only
within the bounds of a rectangle they form. 1 or 2 Pawns move as full
Rooks. This way, endgames are approximated by remaining Pawns and
adjustments for Rooks are made.

'That is weird. I don't believe I ever programmed Game Courier to send attachments with email. Can you give more of the particulars of when this has happened? With what frequency is it happening? Does it happen regularly or only when certain players accept?' - Fergus Duniho

It happens regularly, regardless of player. It didn't happen until a certain point, though, which I don't remember. It is only a minor inconvenience that I have to go to my game logs to make a first move.

Mr. Gilman, how does mating fair on a board with such strong pieces, but a toroidal (Mobius, actually) geometry? I think I recall that boards with looped geometries and normal pieces have more difficult mating since the King cannot be cornered. On the other hand, it is easier to mate in Capablanca and Amazon Chess. Does this even out?

If you have no answer, perhaps Mr. Muller could run some tests on this game, or if it is too intensive, a smaller and equivalent game you could recommend.

If the Bowman moved as a Knight but captured normally, it could be thought of as a Knight equivalent of the Advancer. However, it is actually a complex Moo that captures as an Advancing Knight on the matching path.

The Bowman can also be thought of as capturing along a length equal to its movement, instead of just one square like the Advancer. We can extrapolate this to a Rook. Such a piece would move as a non-capturing Rook, but a piece the same amount of squares away in the same direction as the Rook from its starting position would be captured, regardless of intervening pieces. The Bowman-Rook is not as strong as you may think, because the more spaces it moves the more spaces away the piece must be exactly. The Bowman-Rook cannot capture a piece when it moves more than one-half board length, so can only capture if it moves 3 squares or less on a standard board. The Bowman-Rook becomes weaker toward the edges as its attacks are reduced even if they fit on the board sometimes, so it is weaker at long range.

I think no, George. Augmented Knights ruin regular Knights and augmented
Knights coalesce into deadlock with sliders with their common moves, unless
augment is oblique which most of are awkward. Knight still underranks
Bishop, though we are taught otherwise, as RGB is modern color but RYB is
art. However, there is not yet viable solution to Knight augment problem
when this gap widens.

The way I learned was by looking at ZRFs. You can look up code in the Help
file. Except maybe if you have Windows Vista I think, which has Help
removed. In that case I don't know where you can find a reference.

George, may I ask where you derive your rankings for Next Chess? If you are
using number of comments with approval as I expect, I suggest that you
include the exact numbers.