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Chaturanga 4-84. An Updating of Chaturanga for Four Players with modern pieces and an 84-square board. (10x10, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Wed, Apr 3, 2002 05:09 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Very nice game. It is highly playable. Very enjoyable. The double teams
interact in a cooperative way. The board is interesting to play on,
especially with the center squares which change your piece types.
   Although the game harkens back to Chaturanga, even the 4-player version
of Chaturanga, and other 4-player games, there is a lot on ingenuity here.
The idea of changing piece type in the center adds some of the ancient
flavor too. The double team environment in-itself adds a new element in
many ways.
   The rules are simple to grasp. Traditional chess moves are used, along
with the ancient moves in the center. The center, of course, alludes to the
traditional struggle in chess to capture the center.
The game is very nice. By that I mean that it is graceful and evocative.
   Nice game. Try it!

gnohmon wrote on Wed, Apr 3, 2002 05:53 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

I have no idea whether or not it's really playable, but judging purely by
the text, the number of ingredients in the recipes, and the quality and
amount of spices, I would have to guess that this is a very fine piece of
work.

Applause.

John Lawson wrote on Wed, Apr 3, 2002 07:26 AM UTC:

Peter, I've recently been playing Grand Camelot in another venue.  Grand
Camelot is a four-player version of Parker Brothers Camelot game.  (To the
peanut gallery: Yes, I know it's not a chess variant; let me finish.)  

Grand Camelot has two unusual features for a four-player game:
1 - Partners sit side by side.  Translating to this game, Red and Green
would be partners against Yellow and Black.
2 - The turn sequence is a 'figure-8'.  Translated to Chaturanga 4-84, that
would be Red - Yellow - Green - Black (repeat)

This small change works surprisingly well, and I've wondered if it would be
as successful in a 4-player CV like this.  I generally find 4-player
abstract strategy board games annoying, but Grand Camelot is lots of fun
and very exciting.

Also, the comment about the ZRF being double-dummy brought an idea to mind.
 Has there been a CV (e.g. Bridge Chess or Whist Chess) where the players
bid to achieve a certain outcome?  The partner of the 'declarer' sits out,
and the defenders play without communication.  This might be a possible
thing to design.  One could even play a Feeback version with ones
physician, attorney, and accountant.

gnohmon wrote on Wed, Apr 3, 2002 01:40 PM UTC:

A CV in which the players have goals is my Hi-Lo Chess, in which each player secretly selects one of the goals W, L, D, WL, WD, LD, or WLD.In order to get more variety in the selection, we used to write a pack of paper slips with goals and require the players to shuffle and use the top goal from the pack. There must be a 'mate me' rule and a 'perp me' rule -- if at the end of your move your opponent has a mate in 1 or a perpetual check, you can require that it be played. Scoring: if you have one goal and achieve that goal you get 1 point for the game; if you have 2 goals you get 1/2 point if you succeed. If you have all 3 goals, you get 1/3 point no matter what -- you can gain by preventing your opponent from achieving his goal. Inspiration: High-Low Poker. <HR> Hi-LO Chess is extremely well tested, I have played more than a hundred games face-to-face with a human opponent. Fro the number of games played, you can guess that it's an enjoyable game. It's a game of incomplete information. You try to guess your opponent's goal while concealing your own; and then you can plan and execute a brilliant combination the purpose of which is to checkmate yourself. I don't remember the date of Hi-Lo, but it's probably late 1960s.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Apr 3, 2002 03:15 PM UTC:

Well, the game has been played a fair number of times against the computer and at least once by e-mail vs a human opponent, and it seemed to play fairly well (of course, there might be something wrong with it, after all I lost :)). <hr> A play order of AABB instead of the more usual ABAB for a four-player partnership game transforms it into a limited double-move variant, rather like one whose name I can't recall, where you get to move a piece on the left side of the board and one on the right side each turn. Limited double-move variants tend to be fun and exciting, so I can see the appeal, and spliting the double-move between partners has some piquant aspects, particularly if communications are restricted and reading minds is not at least one of the partner's strengths. I think I may add an AABB variant as to the Chaturanga 4-84's ZRF (still double-dummy, alas). As for bid multiplayer Chess with a dummy . . . Could be done. Should it? :) <hr> Thanks for the kind words, Tony.

John Lawson wrote on Thu, Apr 4, 2002 01:33 AM UTC:

By the way, if anyone were interested, the link to the World Camelot
Federation website, where the rules of Grand Camelot are posted is:
http://communities.msn.com/WORLDCAMELOTFEDERATION

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Dec 7, 2003 10:38 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Rook behaviour on the Old Squares does look odd at first, but it is
consistent with Bishops - although on that basis a variant where Queens
leave those squares as Alibabas would also have some validity. The King
swap helps by unbinding Bishops and also explains how Red Pawns could
theoretically end up on cells a6-9 - although it would still be unlikely!
Incidentally does 'adjacent' here mean just orthogonally or does it
include diagonally?
A version with bidding would certainly be an interesting development,
particularly as ten-piece armies could be represented by subsets of card
suits (though with different correspondences to my Pawnless Fivequarters -
see http://www.chessvariants.com/multiplayer.dir/fivequarters.html). King
and Queen are obvious but Jack=Rook, Ten=Bishop, Nine=Knight would have a
kind of double logic. Jack and Rook both end in K, Nine and Knight sound
alike except at the end, and because the Jack is also called a Knave the
Ten has often been nicknamed Fool - literal translation of the Bishop's
French name.

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Sun, Dec 7, 2003 05:15 PM UTC:

I guess I take a topologist's view of adjacency -- a point is as good as any other common boundary, so yes, a King may swap with a diagonally adjacent piece too. In general, if I meant orthogonally adjacent only, I would have used the term 'orthogonally adjacent'.

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