Ratings & Comments

I was looking to this Interactive Diagram (thanks HG). The Prince's move is not correct. It is not K. It should be KimfnD.

The description in the page says K, so that is what I use in the Diagram.

Ben, why not giving me the right to edit the page to make it simple? If I can edit the pages of my other variants why not editing Shako? If we do this way, no links will be lost. If for any reason my new edition wouldn't satisfy you or other editors, it would always be possible for you to restore the previous version.

I think Shako would deserve a better page with better graphics.

I was looking to this Interactive Diagram (thanks HG). The Prince's move is not correct. It is not K. It should be KimfnD.

Maybe we could speed the game up a bit by making some pieces slightly faster and, like the Drunken Nights of CwDA, tone down the White Blood Cell a bit.

A bit belated response to the comment by Stephane:

'Hello Kevin The aim of your game against oneself is not clear to me ! you should be more explicit about it from the start. You can always give advantage to one side !'

I thought it was clear enough solitaire dice chess could at least be played by using chess, or other standard CVs, for starters. Note that any given CV may not give equal chances to all the sides that play, but in spite of that I'd observe that in a solitaire game of any sort, it is possible to easily cheat, if one is the only player playing oneself.

Kevin

Long ago I overheard a game being proposed where one of the players is not allowed to resign. As someone promptly mentioned, in real life a player could 'resign' by simply getting up and walking away from the game. Nothing can really avoid that, unless somehow said player suffers some sort of penalty, say in a rated tournament situation, or at the least suffers a social stigma of some sort instead.

My submission is ready for publication.

Thanks Greg!

I've changed the full file rule to be simpler and make more sense, clarified how commonners interact with check and renamed the major pieces to heavy pieces as suggested.

I've also done some editing cleanup as suggested by Ben Reiniger.

I believe that makes this ready to publish.

Is there any .ZRF file for this game?

@Adam: if it helps, look and edit the gc preset of Maasai chess. You will see this set

I am happy with your choice of name, Heavy Chess, Jean-Louis. I am seldom that good with picking names for CV inventions - I somewhat regret not having picked a spiffier name like Heavy Chess, instead of the name Sac Chess, that I used for the original 2 Amazons per side concept. The real advantage of calling it Sac Chess seems to be that one very often sacrifices pieces for ones of lesser value, so it has that meaning. Sac Chess also has a disadvantage I discovered later, that there is a company that sells chess equipment that uses the initials SAC.

I like very much the concept behind this game. I'm eager to play it to see how it goes.

the same trouble with the bishop and queen.

It's not entirely clear what the analogous ‘error’ would be. In the REX King's and Glinski Pawns' cases it's using orthogonal moves to the exclusion of hex‐diagonal ones, while this knight apparently just miscounted the diagonal portion, resulting in a piece (which Charles Gilman terms a Student) which is analogous to the square‐cell Zebra.

A queen analogous to the REX king just becomes a rook, but that leaves the bishop completely unaccounted for.

Ofc, there are a few variants which take this version of king and queen as their basis and build the rest of the pieces around them: the oldest is Sigmund Wellisch's 3‐player game (for which this site unfortunately has only a Java Applet, though a more complete description is available e.g. on John Savard's page); the king moves one orthogonally, the knight to any nearest square that the king can't reach (there is a certain logic to calling the hex diagonals ‘leaps’, given that the relevant cells don't actually touch), the rook slides orthogonally, the queen moves as rook or knight (technically a marshal analogue therefore), and the pawn in either of the forwardmost directions (the board being oriented as in Fergus' Hex Shogis).

Alternatively, Gilman's Alternate Orthogonals Hex Chesses do exactly what the name suggests: assign alternate orthogonals as analogous to the square‐board directions, giving a REX king and Glinski pawns together with Wellisch knights, a rook as a ‘queen’, and ‘rooks’ and ‘bishops’ which have each other's move but backwards — albeit this being Charles Gilman, the pieces all have ifferent names. This one had quite a positive reception, and it does preserve some aspects of square‐cell chess that other analogies lack (some of which are touched on in its comments) — it's certainly worth a look

How are the descriptions now?

As a matter of fact, I had had only a minor contribution in support of Eric Silverman and I cannot be considered as a co-author. Just "inspirator" if I may say.

I have myself designed and published a similar CV which aim is indeed to complement Shako, it is Pemba, https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/pemba

In addition if you want to make the lineage with my games, it would be important to respect the choice of names and icons I've made for them and that I use in all my games. This matters a lot for me. Eric S has respected this in the Heavy Shako he made available on AI AI.

You could use the "alfaerie for Metamachy" set for that, it has them all.

Your Zebra (which plays AND and not Z) should be a Squirrel, Your Castle (WD) should be a (modern) War Machine, Your small queen (=Leo) should be a Sorceress, represented by a star, Your Lance should be a Crocodile (=Vao), Your Unicorn should be a Buffalo (NCZ).

Thank you

I suspect 'cannot be placed in check' was intended to mean 'is not subject to any checking rule'. Why else call it a Commoner?

I would avoid calling the Nightrider a major pieces, as this term usually indicates pieces with mating potential. I suggest to use the term 'heavy piece' instead.

The full-file rule strikes me as odd: it tries to 'solve' the problem that on a full file there would be no room for a new Pawn, so that you could not capture a heavy piece in it, by merely making that same problem occurring earlier, when the file still has one empty square. It still seems to be a never-happens situation, but if this rule is just added for completeness, it would seem best to make it such that it only has to be invoked at the latest possible stage, i.e. that you cannot capture a heavy piece on a completely filled file. If the idea is that this gives the game an interesting twist, and should actually occur in games, it should already kick in on more sparsely filled files. E.g. half full, or when there is no empty square on your own half of the board.

I have, but not very much. I'll add descriptions of the pieces.

The full-file rule seems clunky, but I guess it won't come into effect often. Maybe just allow no pawn creation in those rare cases, instead of making it an illegal move?

I would move all the "represented using ... from the second chess set" to the equipment section, leaving the Pieces section cleaner.

A couple of descriptions could use clarification. The "cannot be placed in check" description for the commoner might be misread to mean the opponent can't move to attack it. The knightrider's consecutive moves require empty intermediate square.

I'm always a little wary about large piece-packed variants. Have you played this?

Not every visitor will understand the Betza notation; and while the interactive diagram helps, you should additionally include plain english descriptions for pieces.

Excellent! Thank you very much

Ok, It is Capablanca which I remember then. Thanks!

I found the book from the inventor describing the game in 1919:

https://core.ac.uk/reader/14514151.

He gives multiple versions of the starting position and rules for pawn movement, as well as also describing some 4x4x4 and 7x7x7 variants. The version this article covers is the 10 pawn version (C³) of type C "Neue", which Maack calls the normal way to play. There is also the type A "alte" with pawns only on the γ level, and the type B "vier Einhörnern" where each side has four unicorns, but only one rook and knight, in order to span the whole board with each piece. All of the diagrams in the book show point reflection symmetry, not rotation symmetry, between the two sides, contrary to this article. The type B "reduzierte" pawn movement which the author prefers is disliked by Maack, in favor of the type C "neue" pawn which includes the forward-and-vertical capture.

Please make good use of this primary source, which, it seems, no one until now has found.

What If They Castle Do they Tell you?