Ratings & Comments

OK, thanks! I also thought about 'Meteramachy' for 'Mother of Battles', but I suppose this is syntactically incorrect, because it would need the 2nd declination plural of 'machy'. So I suppose it should be 'Meteramachoon'.

(I googled for the declination of Greek nouns, to see how words ending with the letter eta would fare. And, belief it or not, the first hit I got actually used the word μάχη as example! :-) )

I wonder if there would still be market for an even larger chess variant. After all, Dai Dai and Maka Dai Dai Shogi have 2x96 pieces, which still surpasses the 2x80 of Megalomachy. (But 18th-century Buddhist Monks might have been much more patient than modern westerners...) On an 18x18 board, maintaining the 6-rank distance between the armies, there would be room for 6 x 18 = 108 pieces in each camp. But with so many ranks in the camp there is ample room for 12 empty squares in it without making it too easy to avert the danger of a suffocated mate. E.g. put the empty squares only on the 3rd and 4th rank, in the wings. That would bring the piece density to 60%, which I think is acceptable. The 5th rank, directly behind the Pawns, would remain fully filled, so the slow minors could be placed there to give them optimally fast access to the battle.

Compared to Megalomachy I could put two copies of all super-pieces other than Amazon (which then symmetrically pairs with the King). That would give an extra Lion, Queen, Griffon, Rhino, Marshall and Archbishop, while there would of course also be 2 extra Pawns. So that already makes 8 extra pieces. I think with so many pieces it would require an extra pair of ultra-powerful pieces (Terrorinos or Terrorissimos) protected by anti-trading rules to keep the game fluid . With so many super-pieces there would have to be a wider shield against flying attacks to shelter behind. (Just placing the shield more forward would make it too easy to slip behind it from the wings.) This would need an extra pair of pieces that block flying captures. The WD (which was not in Megalomachy but replaced by the Omega Champion WAD there) could be given this role. That leaves room for two more piece pairs. A good choice would be the Omega Wizard (as we already have the Champion) as a rook-class piece, and perhaps two extra Warriors.

The Terrorino could be a Queen that could also capture as a limited-range Locust: on the 1st or 2nd square in each direction, by landing directly behind it (i.e. a tuned-down version of the Teaching King from Maka Dai Dai Shogi). Or, if that makes it too strong, just on the 2nd square, and then also a non-destructive jump to that.

HG,

If you use the WAD, you may also think about the FAH as it works somewhat the same but with a bit more of a diagonal flavor.

FAH would indeed be a good choice for a 12-target leaper on a large board. In this particular case it has a bit too much overlap with the FH (Frog) and FA (Elephant) that I already have. When I used the WAD (Champion) it was as a replacement for WD (War Machine). Of course it still had overlap with the WA (Archer), but the latter is really a special-purpose piece here, because of its blocking power for flying captures. If I would have a need for upgrading another minor, the FAH would certainly be a prime candidate as a replacement for the Elephant or Frog.

Having two copies of most super-pieces really unbalances the piece-value spectrum a bit. So perhaps an 18x18 variant should have more 12-target leapers. On these large boards the leapers get weaker compared to the sliders, and consequently slider-leaper compounds also start to lag behind pure sliders. E.g. the difference between Marshall or Archbishop on the one hand and Queen on the other increases with board size. In particular pieces with 8 sliding directions become very strong, and Griffon and Rhino also belong in that class. So perhaps I should not have two Queens and two Griffons, and introduce another pair of rook-class pieces instead. A sliding version of the FAH (BH) might also be a good choice, to stay on the high-value side of the Rook. (The 12-target leapers also suffer from the large board, compared to sliders.)

I was running out of ideas for adding other rook-class pieces. Leapers with 12 move targets can play that role, but I dislike having pieces that just add 4 moves to a piece that already participates. This is what you automatically get when you use an oblique atom in them, as these already have 8 moves, and the pure N, C and Z already participate. As an exeption I do allow the Omega-Chess Wizard (FC), because it is a well-known and popular piece, while the Omega-Chess Champion (WAD) is acceptable despite its overlap with WA and WD because the latter two in the variant I am contemplating would have the special ability to block flying captures, which makes them very different even from a normal piece that would move exactly the same. Since all combinations of pairs of W, F, D, A already do occur as minors, the non-inclusion requirement would limit sufficiently non-overlapping 12-target leapers to compounds that contain both G and H. This leads to unattractive and difficult-to-master move patterns.

But then it occurred to me that pieces can also be weakened by making them lame, rather than reducing the number of move targets. A lame 16-target leaper might have a value similar to a true 12-target leaper. And lame leaps are not counter-intuitive. (In fact every distant slider move is one, and we understand sliding.) In particular, the following pieces seem nice:

• A (lame) Squirrel (nAnDnN, where the non-jumping N move is the multi-path Moo.
• The nHnGnCnZ ('Snake'), where the nCnZ part is George Duke's multi-path Falcon.

The heuristic of the interactive Diagram guestimates Champion, Wizard, Cannon and Bishop on 18x18 around 500 (where the 8-target leapers and Vao are around 300), the Squirrel at 600, the Rook at 650, and the Snake and Dragon Horse (BW) around 750. For comparison, Queen is valued 1350, Marshall (RN) 1100, Griffon and Lion around 1200.

Thus this Squirrel and Snake fit well in the set of pieces that can be traded 2-1 for a super-piece (plus Pawn). Or together with a minor for one of the weaker super-pieces.

This is as large as I want to go: 2 x 96 pieces on an 18 x 18 board:

Rather than doubling many of the super pieces, I only doubled the Archbishop, and added a new (anti-trade protected) monster piece in a single copy (the Terrorino). Compared to Megalomachy there are two more Pawns (wider board!) and two more Warriors. The remaining 10 extra pieces are new and appear in pairs: The Spider (a new minor, AH), the Omega-Chess Wizard and Champion, the (lame) Squirrel (NAD), and the Snake (lame GHCZ), all rook class.

The setup has a few 'air holes', to limit the density to 60%. These should allow reasonably easy development of most pieces. E.g. after the Lion is gone, the Rhino and Amazon have a nearly free diagonal (assuming 5th-rank pieces are developed quickly). And on the other Wing the Griffon can leave over the m-file, and the Queen along the diagonal that this opens.

The Spiders start rather backward, but by their H move they can jump over the serial defense shield, to reach the Bishop squares (after these have been developed, which should have high priority, as those files are vulnerable to Cannon attack). After the Spiders move on, the Marshall, Terrors and Terrorino can use those squares, as these are all jumping pieces.

There's a large number of pieces which would struggle to checkmate a king. A player that's behind would be tempted to capture all of their opponent's pawns and hope that there is insufficient mating material.

One suggestion is for pieces to be able to promote to themselves plus a king movement when entering the opponent's camp, with the idea of king + any being able to checkmate a lone king.

Some pieces would benefit more than others, though. Also, the game would become more complicated as the piece values would change.

Having most pieces promote makes the game more shogi-like than chess-like, and I would like to avoid that. For this reason I also specified promotion on last rank, rather than in the camp.

If mating potential would be a problem, I'd rather adopt the rule that a bare King loses. But I am not sure it would be a problem. Eliminating all Pawns when you are behind is easier said than done. When behind, you will not be in a position to gain them. So you would have to sacrifice them away, where each Pawn would cost you yet another piece. For the Rams that is fine, as these are practictically useless on a near-empty board, if not from the very beginning. But there are many more Pawns than Rams, and you would have to eliminate the Warriors too.

I have little doubt that 3 minors could checkmate a bare King, even on 18x18.

Thinking about the FAH (which I call Siege Elephant in my games) and the champion there is also the WL (That I call Mamluk) and the FL (the wizard). So you may have a variation on the game where the WAD and FL are replaced by FAH and WL.

See now why I prefer to make variations on the same theme? Or it could be just me being weird, I guess.

Actually I do not now how this goes with your other pieces. But if you replace the FA with WD it is probably the same.

Also, the craziness could go on, you know?

And another thing. Have you considered bent riders that bend after more then 1 move: the R2 then bishop or the B2 then rook? They probably work well in such variants.

Since these variants have so many piece types, I tried to pick mainly pieces that a player might already be familiar with. This is why I preferred WAD and FC over FAH and WC, and avoided bent sliders that turn after two steps. I had my doubts on FC, because I already have a pure C. But because it is such a well-known piece I considered it admissble. Other compounds of C plus a 4-target atom (such as WC) would suffer from the same lack of distinction with the pure C, and would not have the benefit of being somewhat familiar.

I could not afford eliminating the Camel itself, because there aren't too many totally symmetric 8-target leapers, and I needed everyone I could get to have enough knight-class pieces. But when I want to avoid including pieces that differ from each other by just having 4 extra moves, that leaves almost no 12-target leapers.

I can add that the book is printed in color!