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Almost Grand, a very modest variant[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Dec 18, 2018 08:26 AM UTC:

If you read what Christian Freeling has said about Grand Chess, you might buy the argument that Grand Chess is one of the most excellent modest variants. Late night ideas - am writing a reply about Hannibal Chess, and got sidetracked to a slight variant of Grand Chess which I will have to exorcise before I can go to sleep. (Sorry, Kevin, I'll finish your reply tomorrow. ;) In considering what Christian thinks about his design, I came back once again to the idea that the piece set is not complete until you use the 3 king + rook/bishop/knight pieces also. So Almost Grand replaces the queen with the centaur (N+K), the archbishop with the dragon bishop (B+K), and the chancellor with the dragon rook (R+K), and all else is as Grand. This army is a little weaker than Freeling's, mostly from losing the ability to leap over adjacent pieces. Clearly it works for all the Carrera-Capa variants, and might actually help those games a little by toning down the power of the queen equivalents plus losing the archbishop's ability to checkmate without the aid of any other piece. I admit that after playing Grand Chess, playing Carrera-Capa made me feel claustrophobic!

Now this is such an obvious idea someone must have done it before. Can anyone point me to such a game?

 


H. G. Muller wrote on Tue, Dec 18, 2018 10:31 AM UTC:

Although the official definition of 'modest variant' can perhaps be stretched a little, I don't think it should ever apply to variants like Grand Chess. With two extra super-pieces and a 50% larger board there is not much modest about it. (Or to its inventor? ;-) )

My own design Elven Chess is a Grand-Chess-like variant that uses crowned pieces rather than knighted ones. Next to Crowned Rook and Bishop it also features plain Commoners (which could be considered crowned pawns). Instead of a Centaur I used the Chu-Shogi Lion, however. Of which the Centaur is a sub-set, but which can also be considered as a King with extra King moves (but sequentially).

Crowned pieces are surprisingly impopular, in western chess variants. (In Shogi, OTOH...). BTW, the army you propose is mainly weaker because 'crowning' adds only 4 moves to Rook and Bishop, while 'knighting' adds 8. In addition the amazing synergy between B and N that beefs up the Archbishop value by nearly 2 Pawns is absent in the Crowned Bishop. And the Centaur is the weakest of the common super-pieces even on 8x8, and enlarged boards only makes this worse because of its low speed. So where the unorthodox pieces in Grand Chess have value 9.5, 9 and 8.75, in your proposal they have only 8, 7 and 5.25.


Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Dec 18, 2018 11:31 PM UTC:

Hi, HG! Thanks for the reply. Grin, I agree Grand Chess et al is a very immodest variant. But then Christian is the Ralph Betza of abstracts. He is the one who makes the distinction between variants of chess and variant chesses. And if FIDE wasn't so firmly enshrined in the psyche of the West, that would be a distinction with very little to no meaning. But as it is, make one little change, you are a heretic, and your audience size goes down at least 5 orders of magnitude.

I looked at Elven, and read some of the comments. If you don't mind my saying so, I think it would make a nice partner to Hannibal in a site tournament. It has that power that most here like, and has the kicker of the Chu Shogi Lion, a moderately terrifying piece which is rather unknown here, isn't it? Hmm, if I were to introduce that piece, I'd start by pairing it with my Lemurian hero and shaman, and Greg has a piece (griffin?) that has a similar movement to the hero... heh, one of the problems I have in discussing chess variants is that it gets me thinking of variant designs. Anyway, apparently I can claim Almost Grand as a very modest variant of Grand Chess, and even make a play for Almost Capa. And with that last, I can make the claim I seem to be pretty good at finding the obvious. ;D

Merry Christmas, all, and I hope your Chanukah was happy!

 




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