Ratings & Comments

Summoning looks really overpowered, and we’re trying to figure out if we can keep the mechanic without it ruining the game.

Some ideas:

• Summoning just puts a piece on the board once in the game, akin to Seirawan (Sharper) chess.
• My proposal to give the other player an extra move after a summoning is done.

I mentioned Zillions, but, of course, Fairy Max might be able to implement the summoning mechanic to playtest just what compensation we need to give the other player when invoked (unrestricted extra move, restricted extra move, etc.).

There is nothing wrong with the mechanism of summoning itself. What wrecks things is that you automatically get the Demon back in hand when it gets captured. That effectively makes it an 'iron piece'. Giving the opponent two moves, knowing that he has those, is too costly, though. In the opening you might get away with it, but in a typical middle-game position the opponent would use those to make a hit-and-run capture.

Furthermore, summoning a Demon for free seems too easy; in horror stories one typically has to make some sacrifice as part of a summoning ritual. Using this concept the following might work: to summon a Demon, the Mage should first capture a friendly piece. That will then 'activate' him for summoning a Demon in the next turn. But depending on what the opponent does in his turn, you might pass on the opportunity to summon, and do something else. That would waste the opportunity to summon, and you would only regain it by capturing another friendly piece.

This is looking better now, and I have unhid it.

“I am starting to suspect that this summoning business will sort of spoil the game. Because you get the Demons back whenever you lose them, at the cost of only a tempo.”

One thought I have been having is to make a summon cost two tempo: You can summon a piece, but when you do, your opponent gets an extra move.

Let’s imagine, for the sake of simplicity, a Seirawan Chess variant where instead of the “add the piece when moving a piece in the back rank” rule, the knight can summon the Elephant (Seirawan’s nomenclature for the R+N Cardinal/Marshal) next to it, and a bishop can summon a hawk (B+N, i.e. Archbishop), but each time a summoning is done it costs two tempo.

Here’s how a game could start out:

1. Nf3 d5
2. E@g3 e5,Nf6

We could write the score like this too, if preferred:

1. Nf3 d5
2. E@g3 e5
3. (Tempo lost after summoning) Nf6

Here, White opens with Nf3, Black responds d5

Next, White summons an Elephant on to g3 (I’m using Crazyhouse notation, which is fitting because Seirawan himself frequently plays Crazyhouse on Lichess). Because White has performed a summoning, Black now gets a bonus move, so Black moves e5 then Nf6.

If the other player responds to the summoning with a summoning as their first move, they don’t get the second bonus move. If they respond to the summoning with a summoning on their bonus move, the other player gets a bonus move, e.g.:

1. Nf3 Nc6
2. E@g3 E@b6

or

1. Nf3 Nc6
2. E@g3 d5,E@b6
3. e4,d4

I think the summoning mechanic is very unique and creative, but it might give White a won game, but maybe we can hobble it to keep it usable.

I am starting to suspect that this summoning business will sort of spoil the game. Because you get the Demons back whenever you lose them, at the cost of only a tempo. The most effective strategy thus seems to simply keep summonig them in a developed location, and immediately send them on a kamikaze mission against whatever opponent is in their path. Even a Pawn is usually worth more than a tempo. You would not even care whether the square you summon them on is in a location that the opponent attacks once, as when the Demon(ess) gets captured you recapture with the Mage or Sorceress, and would still have traded the indestructible Demon for some opponent material.

The Pieces section is slightly awkward to read since the promoted forms sometimes show up before the unpromoted pieces and they aren't arranged in any obvious pattern.

OK, I cured this by sorting the piece descriptions from weak to strong, and by putting the promoted versions near the end. For each unpromoted piece it now also mentions what it promotes to.

It's not clear what the rules of promotion are in this game.

Since about three quarters of the article's text is devoted to explaining just that, this is a bit disappointing. The Rules section is almost entirely devoted to explaining when you must promote, and explains contageon; and both the Pieces and the Notes section both mention what promotes to what. So what exactly is not clear about them? Is it that it should be stated explicitly that there never is any choice what to promote to?