Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

Grin, allow me a little poetic license, HG. I will point out that my shatranj variants allow promotion to effective pieces, so promotion is important in them, also, and can easily be just as decisive, if not more. Further, especially in the D versions of MS and GtS, the pawns prove to be rather useful little fighting units in their own right. At least in my experience. 

I agree with you that pawns are the heart and soul of FIDE, but that is more true the better the player. And you see far more pawn moves in the openings of shatranj than you do in the modern game, from what I remember. Grin, could be wrong, as personally, I play way too many pawn moves in the beginning. Still, from the games I played, pawns could restrict the mobility of the enemy power pieces, and lock up anything moving diagonally. Further, with pieces that move only 2 squares a turn, a pawn that moves 1 and is backed up is a strong threat. Overall, pawns may not make more moves or many more, in the shatranj variants, but the moves are more effective, because the pieces are weaker, or certainly give that feeling.

I think you are greatly underestimating the role of Pawns in the FIDE game. What you say would be true if Pawns could not promote, or only promote to a rather worthless piece like Ferz or Reverse Pawn. But the fact that they promote to a decisive piece changes everything. The whole game revolves around positioning the Pawns such that you are left with a won end-game when the dust settles down.

Grin, and here I thought all this time you were trying to get me to design back towards the ancient game! ;)

The "speed bump" comment is merely meant to illustrate the difference I've seen between pawns in shatranj and FIDE. In the short-range games, pawns are actually fighting pieces, whereas, in the modern games, they act as a structure, a scaffolding to build your attacks and defenses around - essentially terrain.

Oh sure, I am not claiming that this change is bad. On the contrary. The original Shatranj is an excessively boring game. In self-play ShaMax draws more than 70% of the games (for FIDE this is ~32%, for Spartan Chess ~20% and for Capablanca Chess ~16%). On top of that it is slow (the draws take about twice as many moves as in FIDE).

Making promotion decisive greatly reduces the drawishness, which is good. I am not sure what you mean by the 'mere speed bumps' remark. It is generally agreed that in FIDE Pawns are 'the soul of the game'. The basic dynamics of orthodox Chess games is:

gain Pawn -> trade Pawns to create a passer -> push passer -> passer binds one of opponent's pieces -> use your piece majority to gain more Pawns -> etc.

In Shatranj there is very little to worry if you are two pawns behind, especially if they all promote to the wrong color. Pawns basically only have value in the King-Safety evaluation. This does affect strategy from the beginning.

Thank you for the comments, HG, zzo38, and sairjohn. I actually think you're all essentially right in your comments. I did set out to change the nature of shatranj, to give it a modern flow, but without the modern style of game. I think I've come pretty close. 

HG, in our discussions of promotion and/as a geographic objective, I've come to see your point of view about the subject. I concede the initial point that the potential promotion to rook or even commoner changes the basic nature of the game - but where and how? Certainly not in the opening; no piece moves faster or farther than it ever did. The pieces are as slow, but move to more places. What I've done for moves is just remove one binding each from the alfil and the ferz. Yes, it changes the character of the game, because all the pieces are now deadly - like the modern game. 

This applies, of course, just to the R(ook) version. The D version was a retrofit, with the WD (warmachine, or Betza's woody rook) first used by me in Great Shatranj with good results, and added as an option to MS since it did work well in GtS. Sairjohn, your comment mirrors my thinking when I designed Great Shatranj and Grand Shatranj, rather than Modern. But while the warmachine is slow and awkward, it can mate in a K vs. K + WD. 

And I think the use of short range rook analogs mitigates the increased power and influence of promotion in the game. I will note that in all 3 games, the power of the pawn is significant, and they become something more than speed bumps, unlike in FIDE. 

I grant I've considerably changed the game, more by promotion than anything else, but would anyone really want to bring promotion back to only the ferz? The original shatranj must have been a rather drawish game, as it plays that way now.

I'm one of the few 0.01% (or less) who arrived here not knowing modern
orthodox chess previously. In fact, I never played chess, and my interest
on the subject was just recently ignited by a friend who is a chess
enthusiast. I began searching for the basics, the rules, the pieces, their
moves, etc., and I was quickly drawn to the historical origins and
developments of the game(s). From there to the modern variants it was a
quick step.

I can tell you that, from a neophyte point of view, Chaturanga and Shatranj
are easier to understand, but their weaknesses are evident. Modern chess,
on the other side -- or "madwoman chess", as it was pejoratively called
by conservative players five centuries ago, when the queen became a
bishop-rook --, though more agile and powerfull, is more difficult for
beginners to grasp. It appears to me that one needs to be always conscious
of the disposition of every pieces on the board, even the ones distant to
the piece one intends to move next, simply because, at any moment, a queen
or a bishop or a rook can come across from the other side of the board and
totally wrecks one's intended strategy.

Using the war analogies in which the games were originally inspired, the
wide movements of modern pieces are like missiles, whereas the ancient
battles modelled by Chaturanga and Shatranj were fought body to body --
except for the archers. (And isn't weird the absence of "archers" among
the Chaturanga/Shatranj pieces?). The most mobile subsets of any army in
Antiquity were the (mounted) cavalry and the chariots (dragged by horses).
So, it is logical that the most mobile pieces on Chaturanga/Shatranj were
the "horses" (knights) and the "chariots" (rooks). 

But even the wide range movements of the rooks, crossing several squares at
once (potentially an entire row), as recorded in (or infered by) the oldest
known historical Shatranj descriptions, probably were already an early
improvement in the game. It's not reasonable to suppose that any piece in
the game was originally more far-reaching than the horse/knight.

I think the greateast virtue of the Modern Shatranj -- specially the "D"
version, with one dabbabah-wazir in the place of the traditional rook -- is
to restore (and put a limit to) the short-range movements of the pieces,
according to the metaphore that inspired the original game. There was
nothing or nobody in any army that could cross an entire battlefield at
once in Antiquity, hence no piece should be able to cross the entire board
in Chaturanga/Shatranj in one move. Thus, the player doesn't need to worry
with distant pieces in the board, because only the ones close to the piece
he intends to moved can pose an immediate threat to it.

The other great virtue of Modern Shatranj is that, by augmenting the
mobility of the counselor/general and the elephants (but without expanding
too much their reach), it not only turns these pieces more "powerfull",
but it also introduces a beautifull *simetry* to the overall dynamics of
the game -- and here, again, the "D" version is superior to the "R"
version. Now each "army" on the "battlefield" has:

- two elements that can move only one square orthogonally or diagonally,
the king and the general;

- two elements that can move one or jump two squares diagonally, the
elephants;

- two elements that can move one or jump two squares orthogonally, the
chariots;

- two elements that can jump three squares "orthodiagonally", the
horses.

We can easy visualize this perfect simmetry by picturing the movement
diagrams of these four kinds of pieces superimposed: if it were possible to
put all four pieces in one same square, this would be the center of a set
with 4x4 squares, and each one of these 16 squares would be reachable via a
single movement of at least one of the four pieces put in the center! That
would not be any "falted" square, one that could not be reached by at
least one kind of piece put in the center of any 4x4 set of squares. This
doesn't happen in the original Shatranj game.

Thus, the Modern Shatranj D allow the players to charge *full power* in the
"battle front" of the game, not worrying about any "missile" coming
from beyond the horizon. It seems to be the perfect balance between
mobility and elegance, dynamics and aesthetics, power and race in a
Shatranj-like game!

I think Muller is correct; still, in this game at least you promote only to lost pieces (or you can promote to General). Maybe make promoting to lost piece only if you have lost both, might be one possible subvariant, too?

Allowing promotion to powerful pieces like Rook completely changes the character of the game. It really doesn't have a Shatranj flavor anymore. The strategic objective becomes promoting Pawns, like in FIDE Chess. While in Shatranj promoting usually gets you nowhere.

Upgrading the Queen from Ferz to Commoner might already have this effect, if the Pawns now promote to this type of Queen.

Thank you for the comment, Orleanian. (Which one, btw, old or New?) That is a nice little intermediate step, with a piece I didn't think of. A minute's consideration shows the logic of the piece, and it certainly does fit neatly after Step 2. Hm, if I recall correctly, Jeremy Good made an icon for that piece, an elephant with an 8-pointed star on its side, that can be found in the Alfaerie: Many piece set.

Thanks for the comments, George. This is the third variant I posted, and the first one anybody played. It is a modest shatranj variant, and because it had a decent reception, it changed my area of interest from 4D games to shatranj variants. And I agree that it is very modest, but it does exactly what it advertises; it plays halfway between historic shatranj and modern chess. But rather than weakened chess, it is high-performance shatranj. 

The larger point is playability. A game can be good, and a game can be successful, but these are 2 different things. This is a decent game that is very playable. It is extremely easy to learn, and can be played with standard equipment. It corrects the major flaw of shatranj, that stilted awkwardness and lack of flexibility, with minimal change to the historic game. It gives the game flow. But it makes the game slow. Given that 99.9+% of people that play variants learned chess first, a game with a 2-square bishop, even if it is jumping like a knight now, and a 1-square queen, is just too slow for modern sensibilities. Would'a kicked butt 1000 years ago. But time has marched on, and shatranj bit the dust way before buggywhips. Still, for anyone looking for an easy way into variants, this game is one. Even if it is weakened FIDE. ;-)

Link

George, many criticisms here contradict others you've been leveling at me recently. Where I haven't, as you maintain, properly attributed ideas or documented origins in other games, here I have, and for this I am a namedropper. Other games have been criticised for being too sketchy in their descriptions; here, where there is a discussion, I'm longwinded. Chieftain is too far from the FIDE standard, this is too close to the shatranj standard. Lol, George, if I were sensitive, I might begin to think your criticisms were more from ideology and even animosity than from a true consideration of the qualities of my games. I might even think you were trying to provoke a reaction from me! Fortunately, I'm not that sensitive. :-D Enjoy! Joe

'Modern Shatranj' is worse than Shatranj anyway because of damage to Knight by powerful Elephant. [end quote]

If the statement is true, then it would follow that Chess, Xianqi, and Shogi are all lesser games than Shatranj... why? Because the knights have less relative value than they do in Shatranj. The Duke premise is that a weeker knight factor makes a game worse. Let us look at Fide Chess... We have Bishops and a Queen - these make the Knights even weeker than do Joyce's Elephants. But who would argue that Chess is worse than Modern Shatranj, which in turn is worse than Shatranj?

On another note, Joyces' Modern Shatranj made it into CV Tournament 3. How could this happen if it were a bad game? It had to be voted on. It obviously got enough votes. It is true that there are some similar games that already existed. But that does not make MS a bad game.

I also believe the idea of making a Short Range Alice Chess has much merit.

Keep up the great work Mr. Joyce. You are a very good game designer in my opinion. You recent critic's comments don't hold up to a logical review.

i like the rule if you bare the enemy king, you win, even if you can be
bared next move, it is more exciting, and makes for less draws he he.
i thought this rule used to exist first, but then got changed, is this
right?
i think i remember reading here on this site someone saying this
somewhere.