Game Reviews (and other rated comments on Game pages)
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I like the idea of making an army using various combinations of a few building blocks, though I do have two critiques.
1: Balance. A combination piece is usually wirth more than the sum of its parts (eg: a Queen is worth more than a Rook and a Bishop; a Mann is worth more than a Wazir and a Ferz) which means an army with A+B+C=7.75 is likely to be completely overpowered. For example, look at army 1:
BNW=10, NW=5.25, BW=5.25, W=1.25, B=3.25, N=3.25, BN=8.75 (total: 37).
This is over a full Rook stronger than the regular chess army.
The more equal the components are, the more powerful they are when they work together. For example, army 2 (where one component has most of the value) is only about 2 pawns stronger than the regular chess army. So, armies with wildly unequal component strengths will need to have stronger components than more egalitarian armies to compensate for this.
2: The components should be versatile enough to be fun to play with on their own. For example, an Alfil can only reach 1/8 of the board which is un-fun to play (both with and against). One solution to this would be 'ABCD' chess, with 4 components arranged like this:
AB | CD | AD | ABC | K | BC | BD | AC |
---|
By adding an extra component, one can eliminate the need for components to survive on their own, and can make weak components without having to worry about un-fun Alfil play.
Should play well, it's nice to see you didn't 'overpower' it.
Hi Gerd, hope your fine and well. I'm sure you haven't upset or hurt anyone!! I understand what you said, and it is extremely interesting idea indeed how you describe your game about the board etc.
I don't want to go on about the pawns, but still, I have to say, the game would maintain your 'theme' even if the pawns remained pawns. However, the game as you have it must have a unique feel and play to it!
Would be fun to see the game in action.
Inspiring game, yet it seems the action may take a while to get going
I don't yet get how to mobilize in the opening smoothly when playing this CV, at least when I tried to do so in my first game (with White, no less). After I moved the pawn in front of my king two squares, for example, I wanted to develop my knights to my fourth rank, towards the centre, in natural fashion. Yet that would allow Black to develop his deves (camels) similarly, and then to take my knight(s) almost at will - perhaps clearly at least a slightly worse exchange for me, since my pawn structure might be compromised without sufficent compensation when I recapture, and by my valuations (though tentative) a Kt is worth more than a camel on 10x10 (maybe even by as much as a pawn).
As my game (with arx) went on, I found my gold and silver had a hard time being deployed usefully for quite some time - an issue since they can get in the way of other pieces. I also had mobilization issues with at least one of two of my bishops, especially concerning if assuming castling is desirable in general. The assassins I had a hard time valuing, but guessed one could be worth as much as a queen. Maybe the inventor intended that mobilization be slow in playing this CV, I don't know.
@arx: I've sent you a personal invite to a Sac Chess rematch, in case you missed it, and wish to play.
The premise for tri dimensional chess set's presence on federation star ships was to teach three dimensional combat tactics, which is something the Bartmess and Meder rules patently fail to do, by blocking circumventing moves.
The rules presented here, on chess variants, are not complete and lack rules for castling but also advocate inverted attack boards, which, if nothing else, are highly impractical.
Not only were the World Tri Dimensional Chess Federation rules written by a fighter pilot, to teach three dimensional aerial combat, which is more in keeping with the original theme, they also start the king and queen in the centre files and provide the most reasonable method for castling, as the attached images demonstrate.
King's side castling
Queen's side castling
This is a great idea with those switches. Together with the twisting of the files it makes a very interesting board and game. The switches give instantly the game a dynamic tension which is enjoyable. And a very sophisticated solution that 2 squares together constitute 1 field on which there can only be 1 piece. There is no mentioning of pawn move/capture (maybe it could be helpful), but it must be implied that 'normal' forward movement and diagonal capturing are in place, that will often be first 'battle' around the switches.
What is better than 2 switches? That has to be 4 switches! The inventor, Gerd Degens, has also such a game, Chess69, which can be viewed through the link at the top, or for CVP members through the link in the comments. I will try to make a comment about it later. But I can only recommend to the editors that this game also is published properly. It is even more interesting because here the ranks are also twisted, very delightful for us fans of 'unusually shaped boards'. It already has a old post from 2003 here on CVP with a broken link in the Alphabetical Index and the Topic Index, so that will have to be displaced.
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I like the idea of this, although it seems possibly over-complicated with the momentum rules.
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One remark: can you watch Magician’s moves and make diagonal-based motion. And small Shielder’s regulation of replacing rules, but it’s not required for now.
Yeah, thank you very much!
Points are accumulating. I’ve written this in the page.
Sorry, but yellow X-es are captures!
I have an idea: you can turn Ox’s face to left in Stone Garden, as it was in my drawings, and make it different from Horizons. About Index it’s same. Please.
No, it’s not easy win, black can easily block the path of check by 1.…Be7 or 1.…Qe7 after 1.Qe2
So it’s not required to add interactive diagram for THIS variant. But if it will be in online chess resource, thank you.
Are there no promotions in this version? Where is the prince and adventitious king?
Edited. Can you publish it please?
I like the idea, but perhaps a flaw in the game would be the unprotected pawn on a7. After 1 f4 Black has few defensive options and one would never arrive at "double king-pawn openings" since after 1...f5 2 Bxa7 already would drop and exchange in addition to the pawn. Maybe as in Schoolbook chess the Chancellor and Queen need to be out on the flank and the Archbishop deployed to the center.
I cannot love Courier-Spiel, but I (heart) Shako. Revising my [2006-08-12] comment: Unicorn=10, Queen=10, Chancellor=9, Rook=5.5, Lion=5. Bishop=3.5, Knight=3, Elephant=2.75, Pawn=1 are endgame piece values (for Shako and Unicorn Great Chess) which preserve some formulas I firmly believe in, namely Q+P = R+R and Q = R+B+P and R+P = B+N. The Cannon should be worth 4 Pawns at the start of the game, but decline to half the value of a Rook in the early endgame (2.75 Pawns). I consider short range pieces to have more value than Antoine Fourrière gives them in his Comment. Even the lowly Ferz should be worth 1.5 Pawns on a 10x10 board.
I'm not quite sure whether I want to rate this Good or Excellent so I'll go with the higher rating. This is a great way to enhance weaker pieces without making them too strong. An interesting variation of this idea might be to have all the pieces except the king and queen start without their non-capturing king moves and gain them by promoting on the last two ranks.
Similar to Courier-Spiel, the game adds modern Bishops and improves the Elephants (called Couriers here). Switching the Bishops and Couriers in the initial setup will improve this game. While the b-file and h-file Pawns are now undefended, they are also no longer threatened by hostile Bishops. Jumping the Courier c1-c3 will help to shield the Pawn on (b2).
Some time before 1992, Paul V. Byway included the Ferz in Modern Courier Chess, placing RNCBFQKFBCNR on a 12x8 board. Ken Franklin also placed Alibabas in Leap Chess on 44 squares.
Back in [2018-03-04] Kevin Pacey mentioned "the pleasing possibilities of smothered ... mates". My 12x12 variant Rose Chess XII has 96 empty squares, with ten Pawns each on the 4th and 9th ranks. But Black can deliver a smothering mate with a circular Nightrider on the second move of the game. A position so amusing that it earned a diagram at the top of the rules page.
"This rule gets rid of zugzwang." More than sixty years ago I learned how to use zugzwang to win with King and Rook against the lone King. So how does Tony Berard deal with this problem? "The rooks, bishops, and knights now also move and capture like a king." Sixteen years ago I commented on Ultra Chess (by Ruggero Micheletto). Here is a question for both authors. Is the endgame King and Rook versus King and Knight even more likely to lead to a draw in your chess variants?
Here is a Fairy-Stockfish variant file that I made for the variant. Despite the E and Elephant symbol, these pieces are still princes (princE). It might not be 100% accurate, but this should be incredibly similar to the actual variant, as there are essentially no differences between promoting the princes to kings to win (by getting them directly to the last rank) or merely getting the princes to the end of the board (the last rank) to win. This variant also has defined castling rules.
[chessii:janus] startFen = rnbeqkebnr/pppppppppp/10/10/10/10/PPPPPPPPPP/RNBEQKEBNR w KQkq - 0 1 customPiece1 = e:WF pieceToCharTable = PNBRQ............E...Kpnbrq............e...k castlingKingsideFile = i castlingQueensideFile = c whiteFlag = *8 blackFlag = *1 flagPiece = e maxFile = 10 archbishop = - promotionPieceTypes = rnbq
This is meant to be used with https://fairyground.vercel.app/, and should be pasted into a file called variants.ini, before loading the variants.ini file into the website.
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