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Three Elephant Chess. War Towers destroy 3 spaces at a time - protect your elephants while capturing your opponent's. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Sat, Jun 3, 2006 12:18 PM UTC:

Roberto - thanks for the comment.  It is much appreciated.  In part you
mention Stones slowing the game; and Peter mentioned this as well. The
fact that two well-respected game designers/players mention this is
important to me.

So I must provide a few more of my thoughts on this subject: We must
consider the 'Pawn aspect' of chess when discussing the progress of
these games.  I offer that 'Western Chess Pawns' will actually slow a
game down more than the Stone / Spearmen  2:9 ratio mix we see here. 
Aaron Nimzovitch wrote an entire book on the subject of 'Blockade'... he
illustrated how pawns could lock up a game.  Such a lock up, slowing down a
game, is good if you need a blockade to defend from attack... it is not so
good if you are the one trying to get through the blockade.

Now, back to 'Three Elephant Chess,' if it used Western Chess Pawns the
game would be slower and adding Stones would slow things down, possibly to
a stand still if it wasn't for the War Tower's ability to crash through. 
We also must consider the Spearmen that can change their direction of
movement and capture.  With War Towers and Spearmen we can have no solid
pawn chains to provide a lasting blockade, even with the aid of stones. 

Of course, there is Theory and then there is Practice. We now will need to
examine the practice aspect.