Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

If the situation in one part of the board looks like this:
White: Merchant a2; Dragon Emporer a3; Dragon King a5
Black: Dragon Emporer a4
and White took Black's Dragon Emporer on a4 with his Dragon King on a5,
could the extra experience go to the Merchant on a2 through the Dragon
Emporer on a3?

Mason, I have also thought about Shogi and how every piece from Pawn to
Silver General promotes to Gold General, and how variable the benefit of
that promotion was to Knights and Silver Generals, but I solved that
problem by inventing Black Hills Shogi.  In Black Hills Shogi, there are
three types of Gold General which become available through promotion,
they
are as follows:
1. Red Gold (RG) +P - Knight + Palladium General (fbK)
2. White Gold (W) +N, +L, +S - Red Gold + Prince (K)
3. Yellow Gold (Y) +G - White Gold + Prince (K)
As you can see, every piece from Pawn to Silver General still promotes,
but not to the same piece, the Pawns promote to Red Golds whereas the
Knights, Lances, and Silver Generals promote to White Golds.

I just realized that I was using your versions of the Silver, Gold, and
Platinum Generals in one of my chess variants, as part of three pieces. 
These are the Silver, Gold, and Platinum Calculators.  They are
combinations of my Scientific Calculator and the original (single-step)
versions of these pieces, so this means that your versions of these pieces
would be S2, G2, and P2 in my version of Ralph Betza's funny notation.
(Note that he uses the letter 'G' for a piece that jumps 3 squares
diagonally, but this is too 'big' for the 8x8 board, so I decided to
use
it for the original (single-step) version the Gold General, which is more
suitable for the 8x8 board.)

I know it's not generally a good strategy to submit a game without playing
it first, but since I was in a hurry to get a submission in, I kind of
overlooked this fact :(

However, my friend (Andrew Kaczrowski) has volunteered to play a game of
Ladder Shogi with me soon. We'll see how it turns out.

By the way, if the absorbtion rule DOES turn out to be a problem, I can
always change the game to make it more WOtN-like, by saying value pieces
only go up one rank when capturing, and only go down ONE when being
captured (not all the way back down to a merchant).

By the way, the Cricket piece comes from Legend Chess II (see my earlier
post) where it was called a Paladin. The only thing that's been changed
here is its move (now like a King instead of a double Knight jump, as
before).

Charles: I understand all about your wanting to standardize piece names.
However, my own personal opinion on the subject is that this is impossible
to achieve in practice. A chess variant that contains non-orthodox pieces
will only be fully enjoyable if it has some kind of coherent theme (such
as a medieval battle, a modern or futuristic one, or a feud between two
groups of animals). If you use only the 'proper' names for each piece,
then you might end up combining a Dragon (N+P) with a Pancake (see the
Piececlopedia) in the same game. To some designers this would be okay, but
since most of the games I create are themed, I generally don't like to
have mythological creatures and food pieces in the same game. As a result,
at least some name changes would be in order here. This is why I probably
wouldn't give one of my pieces a name like Fortnight (too abstract) even
if that was the 'proper' name for the piece.

It all started when I discovered that some people call the 2:1:1 leaper a
Sexton, a pun on its SOLL (Square Of Leap Length) of 6. This seemed as
good a jumping off point as any for 3d leapers, so I emulated it with
2:2:1=>9=>Ninja, 3:1:1=>11=>Elf, 3:2:1=>14=>Fortnight,
3:3:1=>19=>Underscore, 4:2:1=>21=>Overscore.
	For the compounds it was a matter of combining the them,es of their
components. Thus for Knight+Ninja I looked to a Japanese warrior of
higher
(more knightly?) rank than a Ninja, hence Samurai, while Camel+Ninja
suggested to me the combination of someone taking their camel-loads to
and
from the Far East, a Merchant on the Silk Road perhaps. Also, I hadn't
used -ai and -ant for any Knight/Camel compounds with other 2d pieces.
The
Shogun is more senior still.
	Gavin Smith will have to answer for his own Merchant, but his piece
names
look to me to be inspired by Machiavelli-era Italy.

I would like to chime in on this topic...

Michael wrote:
'If the players can't see several moves ahead, let alone what's
happening on the current move, then the strategic depth of the game
suffers and play tends to be chaotic and heavily influence by
coincidence'

Mason and I have designed very large chess variants, and I have to say
from experience that strategy is a huge element in them.  We have
designed
two now, with the second being more complex, and playing a bit like d&d
meets chess.

Ok, without mentioning details about it, our first game features many
pieces, but most certainly all moves that COULD be done are relatively
unused for purposes of bringing out more powerful pieces.

But here's the catch...developing with 'less powerful' moves creates
alot of advantages later.  So the opponent analyzes the probablity that a
certain narrow range of 'very powerful' moves would be done.

Each time a player would choose instead to make a relatively innocent
developing move with a relatively weak piece, it catches the other player
off-guard, and creates tension.

Our first game has been played a zillion times as mentioned, and it
literally gave me a headache after playing it with all the strategy I
could summon.

Ask yourself if d&d has strategy, and if the answer is yes, then our
second games stands quite firmly, the clarity is realized when analyzing
only the most likely devastating moves possible, and prioritizing
backwards.

Suppose for instance a piece could simply transfer itself to another
square on a normal chessboard...some might say this is too complex,
BUT...what are the most likely places it might transfer to?  There might
be only a certain number of squares it would probably go to.

I rarely post to these forums, but I just had to talk.

Andrew

Roberto, regarding what you said about the game being too complicated--I
would have had only one 'pawn' type, except for the fact that this is a
'10' game, and removing any more pieces will destroy one of the many
facets of '10' that I've integrated here. Perhaps I'll simplify the
game later (with perhaps a 6-rung ladder) for the 45-square competition if
there's enough interest from other CVPhiles.

By the way, Michael, my friend has said that he thinks Legend Chess (the
first one) could be a contender for the recognized variants. I'm not
nearly as optimistic, but I think it's pretty neat myself. It has a lot
of historical (think Chaturanga) elements, and it's been playtested
zillions of times, with very satisfying results. I'll have to get his
permission, of course, but I'll let you know. 

It actually is quite simple compared to the second game (which we made
almost for fun, it's way too complex for most people).

And Charles, where did the names for the 3D pieces originate? Just
curious.

Further to Jared McComb's comment (click 'all comments') some of these
pieces have also appeared, under different names and with more Shogi-like
promotion rules, in my variant Mitregi
(http://www.chessvariants.org/shogivariants.dir/mitregi.html). Your
Merchant and my Point are alternative renamings for Shogi's Foot
Soldier,
likewise your (and many other people's!) Lance and my Wing for Shogi's
Fragrant Chariot. Both are promotable to (standard Shogi) Gold General in
Mitregi as in Shogi. The diagonal equivalents in Mitregi are the Cross
and
Mitre, and are promotable to (standard Shogi except not further
promotable)
Silver General. The Wing and Mitre also appear along with the triagonal
Horn in my Tunnelshogi
(http://www.chessvariants.org/shogivariants.dir/tunnelshogi.html), the
three names representing attributes of the symmetric linepieces.
	As a matter of general interest my own suggested usages of some of the
names here are for 3d pieces. In my piece article Punning by Numbers
(http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/punning_by_numbers.html),
Ninja is the symmetric 2:2:1 leaper, Samurai is Knight+Ninja, and
Merchant
is Camel+Ninja. In When Beasts Collide
(http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/collide.html), Shogun is
a
compound of three 3d leapers. Gavin Smith's 3d variant Prince uses
Merchant for Unicorn.

Well Michael...

Not all games would suit your taste, then. The game of Stratego, despite
its name, does not fulfill what you define as 'strategic'. In that game,
you don't know ANYTHING about your opponent's pieces. So you can't see
'several plies into the game tree!' But I still like to play that game a
lot. Same with any game that depends on luck/dice, such as Chaturanga for 4
Players.

Not all games are strategic like that, you know. Many games that truly
measure intelligence are games that require you to live with what you've
been dealt (as by the dice), to see how well you've recovered from a
blow, even if that blow was something you didn't expect. And besides,
Ladder Shogi is nothing compared to Stratego! In Ladder Shogi, you can at
least see, with full clarity, exactly what moves your opponent can
execute, as long as you pay attention to the Dragon and Cricket. Besides,
there are many possible combinations which involve
nonvalue-capturing-value or value-capturing-nonvalue that don't suffer
from this 'problem'.

And one final thing...I and a friend of mine have created a game (two
games, actually) called 'Legend Chess'. They're played on 16*16 and
18*18 boards, respectively. Those games (especially the second) have SO
many different things that can be done each turn that 'seeing several
plies into the game tree' is null and void. And both of us like to play
those games...so I must be doing something right.

-Mason

OK, I'm changing the opening array. Now, for white, it's:

1 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 1
N H L 5 D C 5 L H N
    7 6 K A 6 7

Where K is king, A is kappa, N is ninja, and H is horse. The setup will
also be closer to orthochess in the revision--there will be line symmetry,
not point symmetry.

I decided to put the Dragon and Cricket out in front to speed up the
beginning of the game (the previous setup was really slow since you can't
use the 'speedy' pieces at the beginning.) The kappa is further back
since you don't need it right away. It's primarily a defense piece,
unlike the Ultima-style immobilizer.

Early development of Ninjas is also a lot easier now. They're more
powerful than lances and good pieces to use at the start. However, with
the new setup it seems likely that most of the viable opening moves
involve the Dragon and Cricket.

Please tell me what you think of the new setup. Notice that the burakumin
is gone--and with it, half of the time involved in learning the game. You
also start with Silver, Gold, and Platinum generals now, which should
heighten the excitement.

-Mason

I'm listening closely to what you all say about the Burakumin and the
starting array. The initial version of the game was created in only a few
days, somewhat hastily. The reason why I did that is I wanted to see what
people thought. Keep making suggestions, because I'm going to submit a
final version later, and I promise it will be a lot better.

I think that the Burakumin is a nice piece idea, but I'm probably going
to remove it. The game is as crowded as possible right now, especially
with the drop rule, which just crowds up everything. Thank you for all
your suggestions.

-Mason

It seems to be interesting. I have a question: Can the Burakumin CAPTURE a
piece ending on a square adjacent to other piece? . If not, I don`t
understand well the other untouchability rule. This is the most strange
piece in this game, and it is the need of some clarification about it. I
wonder if the game play is better or not with this piece in scene, some
tests are needed, but, by now, I like the fundamental ideas behind this
game, as the promotion rules.