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Quang Trung Chess, 2nd Edition. On 10 by 10 board with seven mostly new pieces. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
H. G. Muller wrote on Wed, Nov 23, 2016 07:14 AM UTC:
files=10 ranks=10 promoZone=1 maxPromote=1 promoChoice=U graphicsDir=http://www.chessvariants.com/membergraphics/MSelven-chess/ whitePrefix=w blackPrefix=b graphicsType=png startShade=#FFCC00 symmetry=mirror pawn::fFifmnD::c3-h3 kraken:U:U:marshall: knight:N:afsW::c1,h1 elephant::C::b1,i1 bishop::::d1,g1 rook::mRcamfW9:tower:a1,j1 queen::AH:princess:f1 king::avsF::e1

Quang Trung Chess

This chess variant is very different from most. It was finalist of the large-variant design contest. It features several quite unusual pieces, amongst which a King (perhaps it would be more fitting to call it an 'Emperor'?) with a unique move.

The King here has a two-leg move, Ferz followed by Wazir. The given rules do not specify whether the restrictions to King motion (not moving in check and not leaving the cetral strip) also apply to the intermediate square. We assume here it does not.

    The board is zoned, King and Pawns being confined to the central strip. One assumes this was done to not render the Rook, which can only do locust capture here, entirely powerless, but provide it some space to land on. A small extra scripting function BadZone() had to be provided to reject moves of King and Pawns that land in the edge zones. An even simpler function Shade() was supplied to show the board zoning in the shading, rather than using the default checkering.

    The locust capture of the Rook is implemented by the diagram through the general mechanism for multi-leg moves: possible locust victims are highlighted in cyan, and after selecting one, the destination square of the move taking it gets highlighted. In this case, where the destination is implied because the move must be Grasshopper-like, or the destiation would imply the victim, this is of course unnecessarily cumbersome. But that is the price oe pays for using a mechanism that has to be sufficiently general.

    The rule that a promotion that sticks wins the game was implement by havig the Pawn promote to 'Kraken', a universal leaper whose mere presence would checkmate a King no matter where the latter is located, if it cannot be captured.