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Mad Scientist Chess. Fetch me the Pawn, Igor! (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Peter Aronson wrote on Wed, Dec 9, 2009 04:37 PM UTC:

One question, though: the instructions specifically say that you can attach a move part to an enemy piece, but why would you do that? I can't think of any situation where that would it would be advantageous to do that: it deprives you of a part you could add to one of your pieces, and gives your opponent more options. There's no real impetus to dispose of parts you can't use in this way (even spoilage is preferable, I would think). Was this rule included only to fit the theme, or does it have a real impact on gameplay?

At the moment it just is there for the theme. When I was first designing this game, it still used check, which could, in theory, allow for times when adding a piece to your opponent would cause a stalemate. Unlikely, though.

A variation might be to have grafts remain under the control of the player who added them, regardless of who originally owned the piece. So if black grafted a fers to a white knight, he could move that piece as a fers (but not as a knight), potentially capturing a white piece. What's more mad-sciencey than mind control? Shades of The Other...

Neat idea! V.R. Parton called such pieces 'Knightmares'. I used a version of them in my game Combining Knighmare Chess. Adding them, would, of course, make the game even more complicated, which might be an issue.