Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
H. G. Muller wrote on Mon, Apr 27, 2015 09:47 AM UTC:
My first thought is that your array might be a bit 'top heavy': you introduce many new pieces stronger than Rook, but no new minors. IMO orthodox Chess is such a well-balanced game because the number of piecesdoubles for each next-lower class: 1 Queen, 2 Rooks, 4 minors, 8 Pawns. Give or take a Pawn each piece is worth about twice as much as a piece of the next lower class, so you have many interestng 2-for-1 trades. This gives a much more interesting spectrum of material combination then when only trades within a class occur, because the next-lower class is in short supply and most of the pieces there are already traded against each other before the intrinsically rarer 2-for-1 trading opportunities occur.

For this reason I did not only add Strong pieces (Shishi, RF, BW) to the FIDE array, but also the two Dwarfs (K). That gives one extra Rook-class piece (BW) and two extra Knight-class pieces, to preserve the ratio there, and one piece (RF) halfway between Queen and Rook. So roughly speaking you could say the Q:R:minor:P ratio in Elven Chess is 1.5:3.5:6:10, while in your array (similarly 'splitting up' the RF) it is 2:7:4:10. (The Stag should be worth about a Rook, if the King moves alone are already worth a Knight.)

I would not expect a full-powered Shishi to be any problem in your array, because indeed the Stag is also 'Lion-proof'. It was not clear whether you propose this as a Chess or a Shogi variant (i.e. how the Pawns move, and if there is castling). I once tested an ordinary KNAD on 8x8, and it came out about 1.5 Pawn stronger than Q there. Q would benefit from a bigger board, though (more moves), while KNAD would suffer (longer travel times).

Edit Form

Comment on the page Elven Chess

Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.