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Cataclysm. Large board game with short-range pieces designed to be dramatic without being overly complicated or dragging on too long. (12x16, Cells: 192) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Eric Greenwood wrote on Mon, Mar 10, 2008 04:46 PM UTC:

Hi, John!
 They are under the Courier chess-Modified section. Perhaps i can help w/ some of the questions....
 We have a game going, it' your move!  :)

John Ayer wrote on Sat, Mar 15, 2008 12:59 AM UTC:

Eric, please send me an e-mail?

Eric Greenwood wrote on Tue, Mar 25, 2008 12:22 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

John,
 I don't ever check my e-mail--Just accept the game for courier-spiel, and we'll talk while we play!
 BTW, this is a decent game-i've played a lot worse!

George Duke wrote on Sat, Sep 20, 2008 04:10 PM UTC:

Not only Joyce's own Chieftain, Chesimal Fusion I, and Space War are 16x12, also Strong's Cataclysm (12x16).

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 05:13 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Hey this game looks great, love the big board and not too many pieces added, really like the 'duke' too. I will have to check out the game courier logs, i like this type of game because one can learn more about gameplay with fairly short range type pieces on a very large board. Great stuff.

Joe Joyce wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 12:46 PM UTC:

The preset I'm using for the game between nGreg and myself is decent:
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=Cataclysm&log=mageofmaple-joejoyce-2007-243-009
Just don't know where the blank preset is located. I suspect someone familiar with the naming of these games and presets could figure it out...
It's a LOT easier for me to use this preset that the other. I'm a big fan of using symbolism on pieces to indicate their actual moves. I use such a system in all my shatranj variants - including Chieftain, which is a shatranj variant, actually.

💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 07:21 PM UTC:

I mentioned this alternate preset a couple of days ago in the Potluck discussion...  I'd like to make two 'linked' piece sets so that each player can use either set, even in the same game.  I don't want to just convert to these alternate pieces wholesale, though, as I find them very unappealing visually...

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 08:27 PM UTC:

Greg, send me two set files, as described here, each using the same letters for the same pieces but using different images. Please stick to using single Latin letters for labels. I will them add them to the sets available on Game Courier, and I will group them together.

💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Jan 29, 2011 09:08 PM UTC:

Woo hoo! Thanks, Fergus! That will improve the playability.

Single latin letters for each piece is no problem. When designing games, I deliberately name the pieces so that no two pieces start with the same letter. Perhaps I'll mention that on the designing good chess variants topic. Makes notation easier :)

Calvin Daniels wrote on Fri, Sep 9, 2011 06:21 AM UTC:

Mr Strong you do make highly entertaining yet accessible variants. This
with Opulent and Brouhaha  are all find efforts.

This may be as good a 'Big Board' (larger than 10X10) I have seen.

Calvin Daniels wrote on Fri, Sep 9, 2011 09:26 PM UTC:

Laying in bed last night I did have one thought regarding Cataclysm, and
that is the pile of pawns the huge board creats, and yet that aspect of the
game was untouched.

Even moving to Berolina pawns?

Or the great pawns found with Odin's Rune Chess?

Or maybe a mix

four Odin pawns in centre, flanked by two Seargents, and the rest standard
pawns?

Just thoiughts

V. Reinhart wrote on Wed, Apr 5, 2017 02:29 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

In the notes to this game, it says this game has rotational symmetry rather than mirror symmetry. That does not appear correct based on the setup diagram. Even the king and queen face each other, each sharing the same file as in classical chess. Was the graphic updated, or am I missing something?

It does look like an excellent large-format variant. Does anyone know if ChessV plays it (and if so, how well)?

💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Apr 6, 2017 01:05 AM UTC:

Thank you for the feedback and excellent rating. And thank you for pointing out the error. I changed the starting array a long time ago to remove a couple of pieces and speed development. At the time, I apparently went back to mirror symmetry. With this array, it probably doesn't make any difference. There was more asymmetry before, but now there is little point in just swapping one king and queen, so I removed that paragraph from the description.

ChessV does not yet play Cataclysm. I will certainly want to add it and will do so at some point. It's not trivial, though, because of the rule allowing you to move two different unmoved pawns one space. That's an important rule I don't want to drop. ChessV does now support a couple of double-move variants, so it can be done, but will require some work. In this game, making two moves is rare, and the second move is optional, so I'd need some sort of user-interface for passing.

V. Reinhart wrote on Thu, Apr 6, 2017 07:19 PM UTC:

Thanks Greg,

I just wanted to make sure I understood the defintion of mirror symmetry.

I definitely think multiple moves per turn is something to continue exploring (not necessarily in chess engines, but in the games).

I've thought about adding the feature to Trappist-1 (version of Chess on an Infinite Plane). It will help correspondence games go faster when only one move is played per day. Of course it also changes the strategy. The opening and mid-game will go-by faster, and then the final "clash" can be much more damaging.

Theres are some game notations on this site with double-moves, but all are very short (like 10-15 moves). But with a large format game I think it can work really well, and with Cataclysm, using it for selective pieces (just pawns) is a great idea.:)

Kevin Pacey wrote on Thu, Mar 1, 2018 07:14 AM UTC:Good ★★★★

Several interesting piece types in this game. Can well-played games of it be reasonably short on average? Time will tell, but I suspect most such games won't go past 100 full moves, good for such a large board.

💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2019 06:47 PM UTC:

I'm thinking of making a change to make games a little shorter. I need to test it, but I am inclined to change the pawns to fast pawns (pawns can make a double-step, subject to en passant from anywhere.) This change was suggested by John Davis.

If I did this, I would also remove the rule that a player can move two different unmoved pawns a single space (I like this rule, but it makes the game hard to program because it becomes a multi-move variant.)

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