Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)

This is an excellent concept. There's just one tweak I'd like to see. Pawns on the a-file cannot move any further to the left, so that could be a problem. One way to remedy that might be to divide the board vertically down the middle, giving pawns on files A-D a move to the RIGHT, and on files E-H to the LEFT, as you have currently done for all pawns.

With shuffle.

But with shuffle.

When I first saw this game, I didn't think much of it, since I was more focused on larger Shogi variants, especially Tenjiku Shogi. However, now I have a few games against Jocly under my belt, and wow, this game completely blew me away. It is an absolute joy to play, despite its size and complexity (which melts away after a couple games). However, it is not flawless.

The Lion-trading rules are a bit complex, and making the Lion contagious (Like Maka Dai Dai Shogi's Deva, Dark Spirit, and their promoted forms) would make the rule much simpler while also achieving the same effect. However, this isn't really much of a problem, and may in fact be the better choice.

The real problem that I have with this game is that modern "innovations" have made the game more complicated than it needs to be. The repetition rules are quite complex, so much so that most computer programs for Chu Shogi that I know don't implement them, which is a trait borrowed from Xiangqi. The King Baring rule is completely unnecessary, as it does not add anything to the game that the combined effects of the other rules do not achieve. There is no evidence that it existed in the Edo period, so I'm not sure why someone thought it would be a good idea to mention this.

However, despite these problems, Chu Shogi is still easily among the best games of its kind. If you like Chess variants, you should give it a try.

Chu Seireigi is an attempt to combine elements of Chu Shogi with the ruleset of modern Shogi. It also has the benefit of not needing any special rules to preserve its quality, fixing all the problems with the modern "innovations" for Chu Shogi that I mentioned above. Players are disincentivized from trading off the Lions in many cases because they would just go into the player's hands, making them even more dangerous. The repetition rule is simply that of Shogi (draw, except perpetual check loses), and the drops make King-baring extremely rare. However, this comes with the unfortunate downside of having to remove the multi-move and orthogonal step from the Lion's move, as otherwise, it would be too strong, even if only the multi-move was removed. To compensate for this, the Lion also moves as a Bishop (in effect making it a Bishop+Squirrel compound).

Some interesting pieces in this game, I'm wondering if this is the first game with the 'Camelopard' in it.

It's first appearance is as you say from R.J.Darvall. You can see the chess problem here: 'Variant Chess' #2, April-June, 1990, page 20, 'Fairy Chess Review' 1949, R.J.Darvall, mate in 2. Amazing from the year 1949, so yes, this could be the first game ever it is in, if anyone knows another, please say.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the Tribune: (2,0)+(3,3) leaper and the Zerdinal: Slides diagonally, or makes a (3,2) leap are named by Charles Gilman with his thousands of piece creations lol. Is that where you got them from, and if so, are these the first games they also have ever been in. If anyone knows another game they are in, please say!!

Anyway, good work on the game.

Nice to see a game with the Locust in it and it's a great idea too, well done.

This is a very unusual variant. It appears to work despite the seemingly excessively jumpy Owl. The game is very sharp, which I like. The donkey's feel mostly useless, but that might fit the theme? I wanted to get it working with ChessV but couldn't.

I'm rating it Good (why is there no Average rating option, by the way?) because I like the creativity and emphasis on diagonals.

Life, the Universe and Everything is a Chess variant inspired by the works of the late Douglas Adams. It is a double-move variant with unusual pieces on a board of (of course) 42-squares.

A game with a pretentious title that adds nothing to chess. I don't care how famous the author was. If "the answer to everything is 42", the author refuses to further explain his reason for choosing such a number. 

Of course, the elites know what 42 really means, and are terrified. 

The setup part says that Banshee is RNN.

I like it too, very much. I agree with Florin that the text is not well promoting this variant. Maybe someone with better English than me could help Lev in re-phrasing his presentation. That game would deserve it.

Круто, прикольно. Что-то в этом есть и от тайских шахмат. Мне нравится такое распределение фигур по цветовым комплексам.

Cool and cute. There’s even a breeze of Thai chess here. I like this management and distribution of pieces on color complexes.

Are people still playing this game? Would love to hear if they are and if anyone would want to play with me? Post on this group and we can make a plan.

I think you're reading a lot into this that isn't there. It just introduces an incentive to make non-obvious moves. Perhaps it could be cumbersome to play, but it's a clever idea.

Thanks for testing my army! Seems like Zen Zebras would be more balanced if they're against my Clumsy Camels.

This army is ready for publication.

This is very fun (but very long!) to play. I like it more than Terachess II because the extra pawn rank allows for more blocking and the very powerful pieces come singly instead of in pairs.

Looks pretty innovative.

Fabulous FIDEs vs 10-directional Army

I know Eohippos aren't Hippotamus.

I really like this variant. It's simple but adds something new to the game. I think it would also be interesting to add some optional rules:

• A friendly pawn behind its friendly pawn can bypass it by moving diagonally.
• The knight has an additional special move. Special move: The knight can move without capturing an enemy piece two squares horizontally or vertically, provided that there is a friendly pawn between the target square and the knight.

These are my thoughts on this variant. Overall, a very interesting idea.

Is chess [still] important? An older member of my chess club once opined in the new millennium that chess is no longer as important as before. I didn't ask what he meant. To me, chess reached its high mark in the 1970's, mainly with the Geo-political stakes involved in the Fischer-Spassky match, and later the Karpov-Korchnoi one. Chess was also important back then since it was seen as a test for AI whether a machine can beat a highly skilled human player at the game. Chess suffered to some degree because of what followed historically, in both cases.

In the TikTok era Chess is more relevant than ever. In a world were people are increassingly lacking concentration, playing chess can not only help people maintain focus, but also evade the modern insanity. 

Two of the pieces used here (Phoenix and Medusa) I will be using in my Titanic Chess but I'll have to use different moving and capturing abilities for that purpose. Since these are mythological creatures I have to disagree with the way they are used to move and capture in this game. But appart from that, this looks like a great game. 

A good concept, but it needs improvement. I don't like having only one Bishop, as it can reach only half the cells. It's a colour-bound piece, so we really need two. To avoid attacking non-pawns on the other side, perhaps enlarge the board and put a "hedge" of pawns around each army — I don't see that there needs to be only two of them.

Simplified form of Knight-Relay Chess

Complicated problems most of the time have simple solutions. You could have put both Bishops on one side of the board, and both Knights on the other side. And the opponent will have them the other way around. Simple. 

Another solution would be to add an extra piece (A Shield Bearer/Scutier to protect the King) and make the board 10x8. 

Four stars for the original chessboard.

This game was very popular almost two centuries ago and lots of famous people used to play it. 

It's a shame that great ideas are buried and forgotten. This game has a great potential and I'm really impressed by such a simple idea. 

Also, this game deserves a better name. 

Like Half-Kyoto Chess. Remarkable.

No, normal. Like my Rocket)

Interesting concept. It might be more difficult to attack the enemy King from the flank because Bishops will have to travel in zig zag and Knights will be too powerful. But I like the idea. 

Here is my humble suggestion on how to improve this game.

Use a 7x7 board.

7x7 = 49. 

Add 4 extra squares on the corners.

49+4 = 53. 

Add a Jocker to the stack of cards and you are done. 

You can also give additional powers to the Jocker and the King cards. 

So, what do you think? 

Good news! You can play Scramble against Stockfish on Chess.com. 

You have no idea just how insane this game is.

Here is how to do it:

• Go to Chess,com
• Go to Learn / Analysis /Set Up Position / Clear Board
• Place pieces on the board according to the rules of Scramble
• Practice vs Computer
• Change Bot
• Play!

These are probably just a bunch of silly ideas. However, some of these variants might give somewhat nice strategic games. I hope I did not offend go players with my unusual description of their game.

This was a good attempt at mixing Chess with Go. However, in my humble opinion, in order to make this game work we need to keep the number of "liberties" to four, not eight, otherwise the game might become unecessarily messy and impossible to finish. 

A second rule should be to only keep pieces that move orthogonally only. This means that only  Rooks and restricted Kings (Kings that only move orthogonally) are allowed to join the game.

Alternativelly, we can also invent some pieces that move in zig-zag.

Knights can also be included with the restriction that they can only move along empty squares. 

This is a fun design. I've made a rules enfrcing preset in case anyone wants to try it.

I think this piece caled Sissa is great, but I would remove acute angles (45 and 315 degrees) and only keep obtuse angles (135 and 225 degrees). 

I would also remove the rule that both moves have to be of the same length. This will create a new piece that can make an absolute mess on the chessboard. 

I have not played this game personally, but I must say, for a multi-move variant, this game was very well-made.

Also, the new circle symbol in GC for past moves is very nice. However, this functionality doesn't seem to work with hexagonal boards (like Hex Shogi 91's).

An excellent experimental variant. Need I say any more about a concept so simple and brilliant that it works with any practically any board with an even number of ranks, and with odd numbers of ranks with some adjustment?

No other differences.

I have tried the game online, and it is really fun, especially on the normal version.

I don't think you need the word retainer in the sentence "Try to complete the King’s tour with the fewest retainer casualties as possible!".

Also, you should clarify that Pawns move upward, not downward, and that they can swap directly forward as well as diagonally forward.

Otherwise, this looks good enough to be approved.

I love it. There are a lot of nice, sophisticated and interesting chess variants out there, but not many variants that I see myself actually playing. But Lighthouse will definitely be in my collection of mini-chess games I play with friends and colleagues. This game perfectly blends fast pace, simple and understandable rules, accessibility and an opportunity to enjoy the special spirit of Shogi.

Great work, Lev.

Hey, does anyone know where i can find an online version of this, i wanna play it online with friends

I had not seen this page for a while. It is quite nice.

Just for information, I've seen 2 small typos: "sqaure" and "matnicore"

It is a very nice and creative take on the chess labyrinth kind of game. I tend to agree, that digital implementation could be the best way to make this game playable - cause it needs some algorithm that ensures that every starting position is solvable. Overall, I think it's a great minimalistic game that can be used in school tactical games clubs or as support material to teach the basics of chess.

Really cool. Didn’t seen these compounds.
Resonates with my idea of pieces with hopping parts (e.g. for my rocket board as well as for normal one).

P. S. I have a better-quality setup image.

Suddenly seen 18.5 years after (so cool that I’ve first seen Russian language version via random game page!) and I have an idea. There’s stated that same pieces can merge, what if they can be upgraded this way? Like Knight to Nightrider, Rook/Bishop to ranger+hopper hybrids, Guard to Torch (slip Queen) or Lion (area mover) ah he can’t.

I didn't notice the three black Bishops on c5. That was a good point, but still, the black player can't win the game.

I have to recalculate the points. Thanks.

Astounding. I don't think I'll ever play something so complex, but the concept and work are awesome. The case, when reading about game rules and design, is almost as exciting, as the play itself.

As for myself, I’m not even sure this is a chess variant. Although it uses Chess equipment, it seems to be a very different sort of game than chess.

Though it’s rather good (at least at first glance). Idea is very interesting.

It's basically the idea of the piece Joker, invented by T.R.Dawson but with a lot more constraints. This might be better if there was motivation given for how the extra rules are beneficial. As it is, it occupies the term "Copycat" that might be given better meaning. Sorry.

I like Cetran 3 more than the 8x8 versions. The piece variety makes it much more fun.

Very good article! I really like this variant in this interpretation.

This is a good idea but I would have included more randomness into it. We are talking about computers beating humans at chess. We need to make the chess game impossible for computers to analyse. If the chess pieces for this game were something Reversi like, where you can flip a piece and turn it into a completely different and random piece, that would flip upside down the entire strategy of chess, giving humans more advantage against computers.

I see that Bishop/Camel + Harvestman compounds (Evangelist and Imam) are also able to checkmate in K vs K + X endgame. (It includes the King move so can easily do that). OTOH Wildebeest (aka Gnu) is not able to do this.

I cannot call this game “bad”, but I agree with the British chess master William Winter that the standard Marshall-Chancellor and Cardinal-Archbishop pieces added to Chess obviate the Knights and Bishops to a great extent when combined with the Queen already existing. The Amazon arguably also obviates the Rook in addition to people being skeptical of adding it to Chess without adjusting the rules so it doesn’t overpower the game. Have you tried playing with Fusion Chess or Assimilation Chess rules with Men?

This is (IMO) quite a clever use of a Carrier type of piece. I'd love to see if that can be programmed into an Interactive Diagram; I think it'd be interesting to play.

Royal Ninny>Ninnyrider>Chinoise Ninnyrider>Yahoo>Ninny>Dumbo>Trapped Ninny

Interesting variant, definitely looks wild and very dynamic.

(To author):

Реально свежая идея, которую можно развить в свои варианты. У меня есть похожая идея, но с другими доской|фигурами|правилами.

Замечательно!

Yes, I used Bob Greenwade's Dealers Chess set.

15 October is National Mushroom Day.

How does the Onion, the Garlic, & the Anchovy moves?

Halfling Combine might be too strong for a Queen.

I got the icon shown from pictures of actual high priestesses, so I'll do it the other way around: the one already posted is High Priestess (and it's already labeled as such in the filename), and I'll use this new flipped one for High Priest.

Like so:

Oh, and for most purposes I actually prefer to call it High Priestess. It's just that High Priest fits better for what's happening with it in this particular game.

By the way, your use of High Priestess is the only FAN on the Wikipedia page on fairy chess pieces, and I haven't been able to find any other name for that move combo anywhere.

PS: It's the High Priestess in the Dealer's Chess Expansion Set #1.

Another in a line of Fergus' concept CVs re: fission or fusion.

Symmetric Sissa is a nice compliment to this original CV with the use of Sissas.

Thx for the layout! I’ve recently refreshed some text and carried the Rules section out of layout. So I want to say: Chess on the Rope are READY!

Also some my other variants are ready (I’ve updated Fluidity this week and ChBrTi today), so you can look at them also. Please

Just like against the Avians, the Clobberers must use their alternate setup when playing against the Cutters.

Shogi is perhaps one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. It's drop rule lets players come back much more easily, while the forward bias negates the advantage to defense such a rule would normall imbue. However, it is not without it's problems. The biggest one is easily the fact that the vast of the pieces promote to a Gold equivalent. Although this is a very rare situation, when a lot of Gold/Gold equivalents appear on thee board, it can easily turn Shogi into a very drawish Checkers game, and if an impasse occurs, this amplifies the problem even more.

Seireigi fixes the aforementioned problem to an extent by making all promotions unique. This also helps mitigate impasse situations, as more pieces are capable of stopping a King from reaching the opponent's camp. However, this comes at the cost of having more moves to remember (14 in total).

My first thought was that the stalemated player is usually "Low" and will lose the game in fifty moves. My second thought was: What about my [2023-04-18] Comment to Grander Chess? A few minor changes resulted in the diagram below, where both Kings are equidistant from the centre.

WHITE can play 1.Bc8 and BLACK is stalemated (but still wins the game).

Grant Sinclair writes: "Black’s height advantage, which makes Black High when both Kings are equidistant from the centre, has been designed to balance White’s first-move advantage." This statement is unconvincing. In fact, White’s advantage could be even greater in High Chess.

However the Sparrow (mQcK) is Duke from Dan Lee's asymmetric Empire Chess (which is playable on Pychess)

Contravention, Linkage, Submission and Triple Check seem interesting)…

I think the Heroine is very aptly named, but I agree with you that the Popess name is awkward (serviceable, but awkward). Could "Abbess" work?

Your current set-up can be described as the following: an architect’s plan for a four story building, and there are four such buildings. My question is this: imagine these four buildings lined up next to each other as they would be in the 3D modeling of your game, in addition to this, could we quadruple the entire set up so that there were, for the sake of example, 4 rows of 4, four-story buildings? If we did create what would be 5D spatial chess, what would the initial board set-up look like? What would the new 5th dimensional piece be called? Thank you so much for your effort on these variants.

The link section should mention that Chu Shogi is playable on https://lishogi.org now as well.

16x16 is 256 cells not 196.

I created almost exactly this and was doing some research too see if it has been done before; I came across this website and found out it had except that I called it Four Kings Chess.

You can play this variant online multiplayer at: https://chess.oggyp.com (you will need to make an account though)
You can just test it out here without an account here: https://chess.oggyp.com/analysis/

https://git.oggyp.com/OggyP/chess-client

I really like this! The "leap-and-slide" pieces take "ski" moves to a new dimension, and are quite innovative (at least, I don't know of any earlier incidents of that; but then again I'm a relative newbie at CVs). I probably will "borrow" the Tiger and/or Astrologer for a future variant (I've even gone so far as to design pieces for them on Thingiverse).

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.

A very well designed variant, reminds me of Starcraft.

So I don’t understand. Bishop is just a Nightrider (repeats knight steps) or knight jumps OVER two squares to third one (by this it can reach all the squares in Tape chess)?

In the the diagram below White has five pieces on the board and a single Rook "in hand". All the other pieces belong to Black. Suppose White drops this Rook on (b2) and Black advances his Pawn to (c3). This "blockade stalemate" has resulted in a drawn game.

ATTENTION EDITORS: This Chessgi problem also provides an answer to the Patricia Stalemate Puzzle. I recently constructed another stalemate position with fewer pieces than this one and would like to add a suitable diagram to the puzzle solution page.

WHITE TO MOVE AND MATE IN EIGHT MOVES

If the Bishop was on (f4), placing all the pieces on the same board, this would be a simple mate in two moves. But I needed help from ChessV to solve the given problem. Apparently the trick is to move the White King from (b3) to (C2), effectively "wasting a tempo". Bishops cannot do this in Alice Chess - while the Bishop could travel from (F4) to (f4) in three moves, that is not actually the same square. ChessV 2.2 game record is given below.

Alice Chess
Player(White) = ChessV
Player(Black) = Human
FENStart = "16/16/16/16/2N10B2/1K14/16/1k14 w - - 0 1"
StaticExchangeEvaluation = false
Moves = {
F4g5 b1A1 b3C2 A1a2 g5H6 a2A1 c4D6 A1a2 H6c1 a2A1 D6e4 A1a2 e4C3 a2A1 c1B2
}
Result = 1-0 {White wins}

MOVEMENT DIAGRAM - White Chained Padwar (Elephant icon) and Black Chained Warrior (War Machine icon)

On an empty board a Warrior will attack the same squares as a Kylin - a Chu Shogi piece currently lacking a PIECECLOPEDIA entry. A Padwar attempts to reach the same squares as an Alibaba - the diagram shows a Black Padwar blocking the (e5) square from the White Padwar. Likewise, the Black Padwar is blocked from attacking the (b2) square.

The Chained Padwar in this game is called an (ordinary) Elephant in Shatranj Kamil X. Last week I added a comment there showing how a Knight and two Elephants can checkmate a lone King.

Thanks to all. But I agree to make Game Courier preset with another graphics also, such as Alpha or Merida, in settings.