Ratings & Comments

Well, if you want to recycle captured material without taking up a turn to do that, you could do it similar to Musketeer Chess. A Captured piece would reappear on its starting square when it is empty, or as a side effect of the first move that evacuates the square after it was captured. That would still pose the problem that you must remember on which square a piece of a given type started, as for R, N and B there would be two possibilities. Of course you can also stipulate that the user can choose which empty square it goes to, while it would go at the first of teh two that gets evacuated when both are occupied at the moment of capture.

As I understood it only the second is correct. All moves are reversible in this game (except for Pawns, of course). The squares a3 and 4 have an edge in common, so going between those would be an orthogonal step, not allowed for a Bishop. Both 4 and a4 connect diagonally to b3, as they both have only a corner in common with the latter. (Not clear from the picture is that 4 and b4 share an edge.)

The Interactive Diagram I posted in the Chess69 topic thread (which has a similar switch) should show the correct moves for Bishops and Rooks. (Not for King, though!)

It makes sense that all paths for Bishops and Rooks should be two-way. In this case, I neglected to unlink 4 and 5 from spaces they got diagonally linked to with map. It would help to add the following to the rules to help clarify things:

1. Every path of movement for a Rook, Bishop, Queen, or King can go either way. So, for any two spaces, x and y, if one of these piece is normally capable of moving from x to y, it is also normally capable of moving from y to x.
2. Orthogonal and diagonal paths of movement are mutually exclusive. Orthogonal movement is permitted between spaces sharing a side, and diagonal movement is permitted only between spaces that share a single corner but no sides. So, between 4 and a4 or between 5 and h6, only orthogonal movement is allowed, and between 4 and b3 or between 5 and h6, only diagonal movement is allowed.

Now, based on these, it would be legal for a Queen (or Bishop) on g6, as illustrated below, to move to either h5 or 5. Is this correct?

To reduce the illusion that 4 and 5 are diagonally adjacent to a3 and h6, I have modified the board to use alternating horizontal lines of both colors in half of 4 and 5 instead of using a dividing line. This makes it look more like each pair of spaces in a switch are actually overlapping spaces.

That indeed removes the impression that the triangular edge parts of 4 and 5 are cells in themselves, which diagonally border a3 and h6. For the same reason I had used the same special color for all of 4 and 5 in the Interactive Diagram. In the rectified representation a4 and h5 are not distorted, and the shape is enough to suggest that they do form complete squares partly hidden under 4 and 5.

The Queen move looks fine to me.

Now, based on these, it would be legal for a Queen (or Bishop) on g6, as illustrated below, to move to either h5 or 5. Is this correct?

That is absolutely correct. The move possibilities of the queen are shown completely.

After the discussion at that time I have adapted my description. In summary it says:

• Finally, you can move into a switch from below, from the side or from above. If the switch is not occupied, then you can choose whether the piece that moves into the switch is on 4 or a4 respectively on 5 or h5 after the move. If the switch is occupied, then the piece in the switch must be captured; the opponent’s piece takes the place of the captured piece.

Using alternating horizontal lines in both colors in half of 4 and 5 instead of a dividing line seems to be a good solution.

What I try to describe is that  'protected' here means 'pseudo-legally protected'. Capture with a pinned piece is not the only case of that; you could capture with a King. So even in the situation below We5xe7 would not be allowed, because We7 is protected by its King. (And never mind that after 1. Wxe7 Kxe7 it would be checked by a Rook.) So what the sentence tries to convey is that after playing WxW you should be able to replace your Warlock by your King, and having his King on e7 would not be allowed for white, no matter whether he is backed up by Re2 or not.

This is similar to Chu-Shogi, where it is of course perfectly legal to expose your King to check under any circumstances, so also when using it to recapture a Lion. It might not be entirely logical in the context of Chess, but I wanted to keep the rule simple. (And Chess players would consider it a very unnatural rule no matter what...) Perhaps I should change the 'not even...' phrase by "not even when such a recapture would expose the King to check (e.g. because you recaptured it with a piece that was pinned on your King).", and omit the second sentence one.

EDIT: I had posted a question about piece values, but I now noticed you already address this at the end.

Thank you. With the help of this diagram and that comment, your text is clear.

I don't have anything to release at this time

Ok! Thanks for everything!

An extension in your sense is not the subject of discussion.

You can certainly scrap the entire concept. Agreed, but which concepts in the CVP stand up to your inspection?

Mind games should be able to be discussed. Or do you have a different opinion?