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Dragon Chess (tm) A game information page

. Commercial board game played on a large board with a new piece -- the Dragon.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Jianying Ji wrote on Mon, Jun 12, 2006 11:01 PM UTC:

Gary you make some good points, I'll address them below, as well as my two
cents.

I don't think Dragon chess as currently formulated, wipes out openings,
it forestalls them. Since there is only one openning setup, in time,
opennings will be developed. Variants such as FRC and Sittuyin can be
truly said to have wiped out opennings.There are so many openning setups,
and one knows not the opponent's openning setup before the game, there is
truly no way to prepare a openning.

I think Dragon Chess should engage its players in creating new ways to use
the components it offers with the game, and publish more rule sets (It
already publish two sets of rules, standard chess and Dragon Chess). This
does not substantially raise the price, but allows it access to a larger
market, for some small value of large.

On Navia Dratp, if it does get abandoned by Bandai, that would be a shame,
it certainly was innovative. Though I'm not entirely sure Bandai did
enough to promote its product. And I am not sure it entirely solved the
piece valuations problem. (though I might be wrong on that, do tell if
that is the case)

On a tangential note, I should note that chessvariants.com is listed in
the prior art (reference) section of the patent for Dragon Chess. This is
a testament to Hans and all those in the community that built this website
into what it is today. Making it a resource for those that want to see the
state of chessvariants today.

🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Jun 12, 2006 10:30 PM UTC:

The set looks nice. The main Chess pieces are in the Renaissance style designed by E. S. Lowe. I have had a set like this since I was a child. Although the pieces look nice, I have quicker piece recognition for Staunton style pieces. The dragons are designed to fit with the Renaissance set, and they look nice. Curiously, the designer of the Dragons is a former TSR employee, and he probably knows that his former boss has a previous claim on the name Dragon Chess. I wonder if Lex Parker made any arrangement with Gary Gygax before trademarking the name of his well-known 3D Chess variant.

Gary Gifford wrote on Mon, Jun 12, 2006 09:12 PM UTC:

I looked over Dragon Chess and it is clearly not as imaginative as 95% or
more of the games I've seen at CV.  But I think the intent of the game is
to stay very close to chess, and at the same time wipe out all the
Openings.  So, it has done that. (( But then so does FRC... and so would
switching Knights and Bishops, etc. ))  In regard to making Dragon Chess
stray further from chess I think adding a few more piece types would have
made the game more desireable to a variants player.  For a typical chess
player wanting something marginally different, Dragon Chess might be good.


On a somewhat related note: Navia Dratp varied from chess quite a bit with
lots of different piece combos and options.  On an interesting note, I've
been informed that BANDAI (that game's producer) is abandoning it.

Jianying Ji wrote on Mon, Jun 12, 2006 11:34 AM UTC:

(I know these words are somewhat strong, however I feel strongly that this
variant with some changes has far more potential than it currently has. I
mean all this in a constructive manner. I understand the urge to stick
close to the original, but by straying a bit farther from the source, the
game will standout much more against other games in this niche)

[I meant to add the above remark to my original post, but edit didn't
have the option of maintaining the same rating.]

Jianying Ji wrote on Mon, Jun 12, 2006 05:09 AM UTC:BelowAverage ★★

The lack of innovation of this commercial game suprises, one would have
thought that they do their due diligence and seek out something more
innovative, as very much on displayed here. Most of the games on these
pages easily out flanks games such as this.

Here's the challenge: What is the most minimal change of the rules that
one can propose that would make this game much more innovative?
Suggestions?

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