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Drop Chess. Players can select from nine chess armies on an 8x8 or 9x9 board. (9x9, Cells: 81) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]'DEF,LargeCV': 'Drop Chess' a misnomer, it is a Chess-Different-Armies copycat. Nine armies mean eighty-one new games. None of Ralph Betza's elan or panache here, no Betza-style reasoning and rigour. 'I would just like someone's else's opinion if the armies are equally balanced or not' --McKinnis. Sweep this one aside and start from scratch if wanting to add teams to 25-year-old Chess-Unequal-Armies.
George Duke, did yu know that Chess with different armies is not the first chess game with diffirent armies? I think, Drop chess is even a bit more interesting than CWDA. CWDA, of course, also have good points: it can be played with standart chess set. I think, CWDA is good when you want to play game, wich is close to chess, and DC is good if you want to play new game. Actually, i don't think that this game is 'excellent', my real opinion is 'good', i just don't want it's avarage rating be 'below average'.
H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Mar 30, 2010 04:43 PM UTC:This game is ideally suited for implementation in Fairy-Max: all pieces are normal Chess pieces with straightforward moves and no side effects. So it is just a matter of adapting the table of move steps in the ini file. I guess I should test the equivalence of the armies one day with it. The fact that it is a shuffle game also provides an ideal way to avoid duplicate games: I can just start with randomly shuffled setups.
Joyce mentions different Pawns and many of these pairs fit the sub-category chess different pawns. 9 different armies for 9x9 or 8x8 making 81 possible match-ups per board (at least the 162 total unique line-ups) sure to wreck opening convention. A couple core armies, such as Alfil Army, seem stronger than the others, which would recommend some alteration. The piece-types mixed are not so conventional as first appearance by standard indicia RNB-WADFN, because of twists like forward-only components, as if wanting to apply a Shogi brush occidentally for some reason; also side and not vertical, forward as Bishop backward Rook after Schultz's 1940s Hunter-Falcon etc.
I'll agree (though not vehemently) with the assessment that the 8x8 parts are basically Chess With Different Armies. But the 9x9 parts are their own variant, and arguably deserve their own page.
I also agree that this needs a better name; I found this while looking for an article to explain the drop rule.
But the only real complaint I have is the lack of any diagrams to show what order the back-row pieces are set up in; on that point I don't have a clue. Diagrams showing the various Pawns' moves would be helpful too.
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