Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)

I like it too, very much. I agree with Florin that the text is not well promoting this variant. Maybe someone with better English than me could help Lev in re-phrasing his presentation. That game would deserve it.

The setup part says that Banshee is RNN.

Life, the Universe and Everything is a Chess variant inspired by the works of the late Douglas Adams. It is a double-move variant with unusual pieces on a board of (of course) 42-squares.

A game with a pretentious title that adds nothing to chess. I don't care how famous the author was. If "the answer to everything is 42", the author refuses to further explain his reason for choosing such a number. 

Of course, the elites know what 42 really means, and are terrified. 

This is a very unusual variant. It appears to work despite the seemingly excessively jumpy Owl. The game is very sharp, which I like. The donkey's feel mostly useless, but that might fit the theme? I wanted to get it working with ChessV but couldn't.

I'm rating it Good (why is there no Average rating option, by the way?) because I like the creativity and emphasis on diagonals.

Fresh)

I don't normally give the excellent rating unless a game really impresses me. But this game looks great and deserves it. 

Congratulations! 

Nice to see a game with the Locust in it and it's a great idea too, well done.

Some interesting pieces in this game, I'm wondering if this is the first game with the 'Camelopard' in it.

It's first appearance is as you say from R.J.Darvall. You can see the chess problem here: 'Variant Chess' #2, April-June, 1990, page 20, 'Fairy Chess Review' 1949, R.J.Darvall, mate in 2. Amazing from the year 1949, so yes, this could be the first game ever it is in, if anyone knows another, please say.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Tribune: (2,0)+(3,3) leaper and the Zerdinal: Slides diagonally, or makes a (3,2) leap are named by Charles Gilman with his thousands of piece creations lol. Is that where you got them from, and if so, are these the first games they also have ever been in. If anyone knows another game they are in, please say!!

Anyway, good work on the game.

Tusk Tower 1320

With shuffle.

How about switching Diamonds & Onyxes? or Onyxes with Lame Ducks? That'll make Onyxes easier to bring to long diagonals.

How about LafJ instead of Diamonds?

This is an excellent concept. There's just one tweak I'd like to see. Pawns on the a-file cannot move any further to the left, so that could be a problem. One way to remedy that might be to divide the board vertically down the middle, giving pawns on files A-D a move to the RIGHT, and on files E-H to the LEFT, as you have currently done for all pawns.

Since it's the featured variant for this month, here's Glinski's HC:

But with shuffle.

It would be an interesting challenge for someone to make an Interactive Diagram for this variant.

Pushing does appear in other games, of course (a couple of pieces in my own Zwangkrieg do it), but I don't think I've ever seen the idea applied as uniformly as this, nor explained as neatly, clearly, and elegantly. It makes me wish that there was a simple code one could add into XBetza for doing it.

This looks like a good idea but I am not so sure of its practicality. The board might end up very crowded and we need to see a game simulation before deciding on its "greatness". 

The 4 stars are only for the name. I like the idea of using Cleopatra as a seducing piece.

I had this idea of making pieces switch sides for a long time, but I always thought that the person in charge of finances could do this job, which is more realistic. 

K+2B can only draw.

KNS is about 11 Pawn.

I had the same idea yesterday, glad to know I am not alone. What about en passant? If introduced, it should be applied "from behind", so e.g. after c4, white could capture its c4 pawn moving b2 or d2 to c3.

Here's an example:

Smess

But with 5 & Ninny can promotes to Brain.

Lovely

Macadamia Shogi is, by a hefty margin, my favourite Shogi variant of the larger boards to date. Maka Dai Dai was previously the most enjoyable to me, but 400 moves later I'm stil in the middle game and it feels more like committing to a project than playing a game. Macadamia Shogi really helps alleviate this without detracting too much from the main points of appeal of Maka Dai Dai in my opinion. My heartfelt thanks to H. G. Muller for assembling this variant!

I also root for his success with the C localserver project if it still considered in the pipeline.

Admittedly, the main purpose for my comment to this page though would actually be to raise awareness--if it weren't already known--that the kanji character piece set for the js board on this website has sadly seemed to have broken partially, as a few of the pieces may be missing links now, or at least otherwise aren't loading on multiple browsers I've tested with. I was hoping that these could be potentially restored, as they were a much preferred visual setting.

Anyway, thanks again for all the hard work you've done for chess variants and the like, and I wish you good luck with the future endeavours!!