Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Fusion Chess was preceded by Sentai Chess, a Power Rangers inspired variant
in which every type of piece could combine into one mega-piece. Even
though the most basic Sentai pieces were weaker than Chess pieces, the
mega-piece was capable of checkmating a King on its own. Overall, Sentai
Chess was not that good a game. Based on similar ideas, Fusion Chess was a
considerable improvement over Sentai Chess. One of the main improvements
came from limiting fusions to two basic pieces.

Besides this, I have regularly found that the Amazon is too powerful of a
piece. It hurts gameplay, and I normally avoid using it in any of my
games. If Fusion Chess allowed fusion to an Amazon, it would be a worse
game. Likewise, a Multi-fused King would be too difficult to checkmate.
British Chess sat on the shelf for a couple years until I figured out how
to make the royal Queen more checkmatable.

Nevertheless, multiple fusions might not hurt the gameplay of something
like Metamorphin' Fusion Chess, Thunder Chess, or Bedlam. For in these
games, the Metamorph Chess rules would turn any multiply-fused piece that
makes a capture into the piece it just moved as. This would limit the
destructive capability of such pieces. But even so, the Amazons would be
more menacing, and the mutiply-fused Kings would be harder to checkmate.

Actually, a Thunder Chess variant might not work, for the Metamorph
capturing rules and the Assimilation capturing rules would conflict. One
compromise between them would be for a compound piece to convert to the
simple piece it moved as whenever it could not assimilate the piece it was
capturing.

I may try to implement all-out fusion versions of these during the summer.

It might be interesting to apply the fusion idea to Xiang Qi, in which most
pieces are weak individually. The General could become its own rider by
fusing with the Rook, a standard King with the Ferz, or a ruling Waffle
with the Elephant. The combinations General+Horse, Ferz+Elephant,
Ferz+Horse, and Horse+Elephant would play like shorter-range versions of
Gazelle, Bishop, Gnu, and Bison. Ferz+Rook would of course be a Shogi
(capturable) Dragonking. Elephant+Rook might be called a Dragonwaffle.
Regarding where combined pieces can go I would suggest King as its
components, Elephant combinations their own side of the river, and the
rest throughout the board. Separation could not result in a General or
Ferz outside the palace.
	By the way, I notice that you have still not corrected 'Eques Rexi' to
'Equites Reges'

One minor comment: There are only 2 knights when there are 3 bishops and 3
rooks.  How about a variant where each player has a Eques rex to start off
with, in place of their king?  Not only would this balance the number of
component pieces, but also the player's two centre pieces would contain
all of the four components.

No. After having that exact question in a tourney game, the answer was resolved fully in a kibbitz by Antoine.:
2007-09-30	Antoine Fourrière Verified as Antoine Fourrière	
When trying to understand the code Fergus wrote for the not-functioning automated preset for his own game, you can read in the Post-move fields

die You may not capture or fuse with a piece on a fission move.; 

This lead to the quick creation of the 'Fluid' mutator, which allows that.

http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSfluidchess ;-)

Very interesting variant!  I'd love to play it on a real board, if I had the special pieces...  Question though: can a player's original queen "split" (fission) or is that piece permanently a regular queen?  Same question for a promoted pawn... if a pawn promotes to queen, is splitting an option on that queen? Can a pawn promote to a fused type such as marshal or is queen the only option? 

Disregard my question about pawn promotion there... I see it in the description.

I'd love to play it on a real board, if I had the special pieces...

Some small sets you can pick up in a dollar store will do. You just need to be able to fit two pieces on the same space. Or, if you do want the compound pieces, you can pick them up from the House of Staunton. See House of Staunton Chess Variant Kits for details. At least that works for the Marshall and Paladin (a.k.a. Chancellor and Archbishop), but the compound royal pieces have not been made. For those, you could conceivably use fancier pieces from another Chess set, stick crosses on some Chess pieces, or pick other Chess variant pieces from HOS to represent them. The Fortress might work for the Dragon King, the Dragon for the Pope, and the Unicorn for the Eques Rex. I have ordered these pieces and will add them to the page soon.

can a player's original queen "split" (fission) or is that piece permanently a regular queen?

Quoting from the Queen's piece description: The Queen is a combination of Rook and Bishop. It may separate into its components by moving one of them to an empty space.

 Can a pawn promote to a fused type such as marshal or is queen the only option?

Quoting from the Pawn's piece description: Upon reaching the last rank, a Pawn may promote to a Rook, Bishop, or Knight. It may not promote to a Queen, Marshall, or Paladin.

I'm glad someone posted a comment about Fusion Chess, because it reminded me that I've been wanting to post a comment of my own for some time. I keep forgetting to do it. Might as well do it now.

Based on my experiences with Zillions of Games, I think that the Dragon King is too tough to checkmate (and, perhaps, so are the Pope and Eques Rex). I think I can easily force a draw in this game by forming a Dragon King, and then exchanging material as quickly as I can. (My only fear is getting checkmated while the board is still cramped.) I don't care if I'm way behind in material at the endgame, because it would take a ton of material to checkmate a lone Dragon King.

Now, this is just coming from my experiences with Zillions of Games; I haven't played Fusion Chess against a human before. Anyone want to play against me on Game Courier, and try to prove me wrong? :-)

Another cool idea by Fergus.

Another cool idea i like this comments in this post

there is another very interesting in

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and in addition he offers a very good chess guide...

I share the concern of Joseph DiMuro: this game should not be winnable except against the most incompetent of players. It would need some rule that you cannot move a royal slider through check, like in Caissa Brittannia, to make it a serious game.