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Supremo Superchess. Decimal variant with extra powerful pieces. (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Dec 16, 2003 04:31 AM UTC:
What is the point in distinguishing between discovered and direct illegal
moves? An illegal move is illegal. Period. Rule 6 is redundant, since the
very meaning of illegal implies that a player can't make an illegal move.
Rule 9 makes no sense. Why on earth would there be any kind of rule
against taking back illegal moves?

I share the same opinion on the name as Michael Howe. As the inventor of
Supremo, I take special umbrage at the name, though since I've still
neglected to publish the rules for Supremo, I doubt Peng has any knowledge
of it. Unlike the mere superlative use of Supremo here, my Supremo is just
an Ultima variant. I think it's included with the Rococo ZRF.

The piece descriptions are a bit ambiguous. I'm not sure if the Super
General hops as a Leo or as a Grasshopper. The more literal reading
suggests the latter. Likewise, I'm not sure if the Super Rook and Super
Bishop hop as Cannons and Vaos or as Grasshoppers do.

If these pieces do hop as Grasshoppers, they are a bit less powerful than
I first imagined. Nevertheless, I expect that the pieces are really too
powerful. I once considered a Rook+Cannon piece and a Bishop+Vao piece for
a game, calling them by the names of Tank and Bazooka, but I decided they
were too powerful. For example, the Tank could pin two pieces with its
Cannon powers, then capture one and still keep the other pinned with its
Rook powers, then capture the other one too. Also, you couldn't block a
direct Tank attack, because it could just hop over the piece that tried to
intervene. Even if these pieces really hop as Grasshoppers, I would still
expect situations like these to arise.

The way this game is named, and given the pieces used in the game, I
imagine that Peng believes that more powerful pieces make a better game.
In contrast to this, I believe that a good Chess variant has to find a
balance between pieces that are too weak and pieces that are too powerful.
Chess is a good example of a game with this balance. I expect that Supremo
Superchess is very unbalanced.