Ratings & Comments
How about Syncretic CHess? Another way to think about Feebback Chess is to enfeeble the pieces when they are toward the back of the board (i.e. closer to their first rank). This could be done by laming or spaciousing (whatever, this is a concept, not a finished product). BUT, the pieces would regain their normal powers as they approached the far rank. AND, you could lift an idea from M-Chess, and give them different augmentors depending on what ranks they stand on, perhaps leftward augmentors on righthand columns, etc. THEN, you could make it Archoniclastic, augmenting pieces depending on what color square they stand on. AND THEN, you could apply this to Peter Aronson's Chess with Cyclical Armies! AND AFTER THAT, you could work on the hex version for three players!! ('Basingstoke, John') Ahh, yes. Basingstoke it is. --JCL
Speaking of different topologies, I could swear I once came across a variant where the position of a piece within a square had an effect on its state or capabilities, but I have, perhaps mercifully, forgotten everything about it that might enable me to track it down. --JCL
Daniel, do you realize that the site icon in the upper left-hand corner takes you to the index page? I have visited regularly for years, so I have the 'What's new?' page bookmarked. --JCL
Make your pages have a 'printer option!' That way I could take your data home with me and actually use it!! Also, put a 'home' buttin at the bottom of each page, it would make site navigation easier... Thanks, Daniel
Very nice game. It is highly playable. Very enjoyable. The double teams interact in a cooperative way. The board is interesting to play on, especially with the center squares which change your piece types. Although the game harkens back to Chaturanga, even the 4-player version of Chaturanga, and other 4-player games, there is a lot on ingenuity here. The idea of changing piece type in the center adds some of the ancient flavor too. The double team environment in-itself adds a new element in many ways. The rules are simple to grasp. Traditional chess moves are used, along with the ancient moves in the center. The center, of course, alludes to the traditional struggle in chess to capture the center. The game is very nice. By that I mean that it is graceful and evocative. Nice game. Try it!
The idea is, it's grid chess, but each grid rotates 1/4 turn after each move; and alternate grids rotate backwards -- e.g. a1 goes to a2, and c2 goes to c1.
I wrote the program that displays the board and lets 2 people play, more than once, in different languages. Long lost, of course, even if you could find compilers/interpreters for those languages.
Orbital Rotating Grid Chess is like Pinwheel Chess except that e4,e5,d4,d5 is one cell, (so far just as in Offset Grid Chess, but...) and the other squares in c4-f6 are another cell, and the remaining squares in b2-g7 another, and the remaining squares in a1-h8 (in other words, the 28 edge squares) are another cell. And they rotate in opposite directions. Chaos!
Knight's Tour Rotating Grid Chess, not the right name, but you take a Knight's tour, and each turn the pieces on a1 move to b3 and the pieces on c2 get transferred to a1, and so forth
And finally, Brownian Motion Chess, where the squares are randomly inserted into a linked list, unknown to the players, and each turn everything moves forward on the list one step.
All that was from just one of my densely-typed two page articles in N/A in early 1970s.
I have all the back issues, and some other stuff, packed in a box to send them away, but I never get around to doing it. So nag me.
Critique: Pinwheel could be played postal, which was the only mode back then, but you'd be crazy to try. Both pinwheel and Orbital should be playable (and even fun!) in a noncompetitive online situation.
Knight's Tour is just an over-the-top thingy all us CV designers like to do, and Brownian Motion is over-the-over-the-topmost.
--
gnohmon
I have no idea whether or not it's really playable, but judging purely by the text, the number of ingredients in the recipes, and the quality and amount of spices, I would have to guess that this is a very fine piece of work. Applause.
Peter, I've recently been playing Grand Camelot in another venue. Grand Camelot is a four-player version of Parker Brothers Camelot game. (To the peanut gallery: Yes, I know it's not a chess variant; let me finish.) Grand Camelot has two unusual features for a four-player game: 1 - Partners sit side by side. Translating to this game, Red and Green would be partners against Yellow and Black. 2 - The turn sequence is a 'figure-8'. Translated to Chaturanga 4-84, that would be Red - Yellow - Green - Black (repeat) This small change works surprisingly well, and I've wondered if it would be as successful in a 4-player CV like this. I generally find 4-player abstract strategy board games annoying, but Grand Camelot is lots of fun and very exciting. Also, the comment about the ZRF being double-dummy brought an idea to mind. Has there been a CV (e.g. Bridge Chess or Whist Chess) where the players bid to achieve a certain outcome? The partner of the 'declarer' sits out, and the defenders play without communication. This might be a possible thing to design. One could even play a Feeback version with ones physician, attorney, and accountant.
By the way, if anyone were interested, the link to the World Camelot Federation website, where the rules of Grand Camelot are posted is: http://communities.msn.com/WORLDCAMELOTFEDERATION
That was an excellent chatter response. Responsible usage of the rules tells us that a piece which takes only one step ends its move after that one step and therefore is not eligible to chatter. However, your idea sounds like a lot of fun! One can always arbitrarily restrict Kings and Pawns from participating in the fun; and I think this would be necessary, not only because it appears to be too difficult to chase down a King supported by multiple riders (note that 'a K supported by a Bishop' can only run towards the Bishop), but also because the offensive uses of Chattering Pawns would dominate the game, as they do in N-Relay II. Decimal Chatter Chess, on a 10x10 board, would become quite interesting if you had the Pawns on the third rank, all Riders on the first, and a second rank full of weak steppers -- the usual suspects, W, F, Crab, Barc, A, and D -- because the early play would be dominated by the weak pieces being thrown forwards by the power of the riders. You'd need to arrange your pieces very carefully, making room for the weak pieces to get past the Pawns, setting up intersecting lines for the riders, and putting the weakies where they could join in the fray but not get in the way. All the while trying to maintain a defense against the pesky foe.
People should know that the excellent diagram that makes it so easy to visualize the chatter moves was added by the editor, not the author. The editor gets an 'excellent' rating for this page.
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