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

This page is written by the game's inventor, Charles Gilman.

UNIONSCHACH, SACHSENSCHACH, and LEAPALE

(tr)
The first variant that I posted on these pages, the 3d Tunnelchess, has a weakness. Having only 16 cells at each end limits total army strength, and the shortest dimension of 4 restricts Bishops and Unicorns. Having seen the unbalance of the 5³ board and unwieldiness of the 8³ board I settled on a 6³ board for further two-player cubic-board games. This page's variants have symmetric pieces on the back ranks. On the second rank I originally considered a mixture of Pawnlike pieces from Man and Beast 02: Shield Bearers but have now switched to the Stockbroker first devised for my offshoot Courier Leapale. There is no initial double move and, as is usual in my three-dimensional and/or four-player variants, there is no Castling.

To identify cells, I recommend ranks numbered 1-6, levels lettered u-z (the first character of the cell), and the remaining dimension lettered a-f (the middle character, before the rank number). Extending Tunnelchess file groupings, files divide into an Outer Frame of files ua, uf, za, zf; an Outer Wall of files ub-ue, va-ya, vf-yf, zb-ze; an Inner Frame of files vb, ve, yb, ye; an Inner Wall of files vc, vd, wb, we, xb, xe, yc, yd; and a Tunnel of wc, wd, xc, xd. In Leapale the Inner Frame and Wall inherit the Frame and Wall rôle from Tunnelchess. In Unionschach and Sachsenschach the Outer Frame has the Rooks, the Outer Wall the minor pieces, the Tunnel the three-component compounds, and remaining files the two-component compounds. This terminology also helps explain how Stockbrokers move.

UNIONSCHACH

Unionschach has a back rank exclusively of radial pieces. The above diagram shows the top 3 levels. The 4th level is the mirror image of the 3rd, and the 5th and 6th the same as the 2nd and 1st respectively.
Rook Bishop Queen The ROOK, BISHOP, and QUEEN are the familiar linepieces of FIDE Chess.
Unicorn The UNICORN is the additional piece from Raumschach.
Duchess Governor Empress The DUCHESS, GOVERNOR, and EMPRESS are the Rook, Bishop, and Queen with the Unicorn move added.
Emperor The EMPEROR is a King that can also make a 1:1:1 move. These names are more fully explained in my piece article Man and Beast 01: Constitutional Characters.

They are in the same numbers as Pawnless Tunnelchess: two imperial couples and four of everything else. This has the advantage that four standard sets, two each of two distinguishable sizes, can be used using all Pawns and small Knights as Stockbrokers, small linepieces as themselves, small Kings as the remaining Queens, large Knights as Unicorns, large linepieces as their own compounds with the Unicorn, and large Kings as Emperors. Promotion requires the usual improvisations. The name is because the arrangement suggests the Union Jack, the flag of Britain.

SACHSENSCHACH

Sachsenschach has the same arrangement of radial pieces, but with 2 to 4 kinds of coprime oblique leaper filling the 8 empty back-rank cells. The example shown has Knight 2:1:0 KNIGHTS on the top level, Sexton 2:1:1 SEXTONS above and Ninja 2:2:1 NINJAS below the Bishops, and Camel 3:1:0 CAMELS on the bottom level, giving a neat balance of pieces with the Bishop's binding (Sexton, Camel) to unbound ones (Knight, Ninja) and biaxial (Bishop, Knight, Camel) to triaxial (Unicorn, Sexton, Ninja). Substituting 3:2:0 ZEBRAS, 3:2:1 FORTNIGHTS, 3:2:2 FENCERS, and 3:3:2 LECTURERS respectively gives a similar effect with longer leaps. A further alternative would be to have just two kinds of oblique leaper, one between all Rooks and Bishops and the other between all Rooks and Unicorns; this could bring in the Elf 3:1:1 ELF which shares the Unicorn's binding. For the origin of piece names not having their own links see my article Man and Beast 05: Punning by Numbers. Its good extrapolation of the FIDE piece mix may make Sachsenschach my best family of face-to-face 3d variants, especially now that it uses Stockbrokers. A disadvantage is the need for a fifth set, though with only 72 of the 80-piece total. On the other hand this allows all Stockbrokers to be Pawn-shaped, oblique leapers Knight-shaped, and spare pieces ready for promotions. The name is a pun on sax=sex=six. The first equation refers to the names of Saxon colonies in southern Britain: Essex and Middlesex around London, Sussex on the Channel coast to the south, and Wessex to the west of that. The second is Latin-English translation.

LEAPALE

Leapale starts with the Simple Tunnelchess, Intermediate Tunnelchess (the example above as it is rotationally symmetric, with lower levels extrapolated as with the Unionschach diagram), or Paired Piece Tunnelchess back rank and adds 4 each of 5 types of coprime oblique leaper symmetrically around the outside. Leapale is leaper-heavy, no bad thing in a 3d variant, and especially useful if the Elf is to be used. This is a more diverse family of variants than Sachsenschach, as the three sets of inner-file radial pieces differ in strength. The name is from Leapale Road in the heart of Guildford, the town on the river Wey where Lewis Carroll ended his days. It is also a fitting name for a variant first submitted in 2004, this millennium's first leap year (and most recently updated in 2008, its second), although the honour of first variant alluding to 2004 goes to Ken Franklin's Leap Chess, and it is fitting having the leapers "outside the pale" of the nobility-filled Tunnelchess file ends. Guildford is, like the Runnymede of Magna Carta Chess, in my native county of Surrey, whose own name means "southern part of a kingdom", that is, of the Middlesex of Saxon times. I have since added a page for the related but Courier-influenced Courier Leapale in which the Stockbroker first appeared.

THE FRONT RANK

All this page's variants have a front rank filled with STOCKBROKERS. This piece is an enhancement of the Broker of Man and Beast 02: Shield Bearers, hence its name. Like Brokers they can move one step directly forward without capturing, or capture one step in any of the Unicorn's forward directions, but the Stockbroker can also move one step in the Bishop's forward directions. This last kind of move must be noncapturing when staying within the Tunnel, within the Inner Wall and Frame, or within the Outer Wall and Frame; it must be capturing when moving between two of these three groupings. Stockbrokers are, in terms of ratios of capturing to noncapturing moves and moving between inner and outer files, the closest extrapolation of the 2d Pawn to a 3d face-to-face variant with more than 5x5 files.

The simplest promotion rule is to any capturable back-rank piece, but there are other options. To avoid the temptation to always promote to Empress, that choice could be restricted to require a capturing arrival on the far rank. Another approach is to allow promotion to Empress only at the end of the Tunnel, two-piece compounds at the end of the Inner Wall/Frame, and simple pieces at the end of the Outer Wall/Frame.

Last modified: Thursday, March 27, 2008 


Categories and Details


Credits

By Charles Gilman.

Comments

Unionchach, Sachsenschach, and Leapale. Some 3D Chess variants. (6x(6x6), Cells: 216)
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Nov 12, 2006 02:40 AM EST:
I have noticed a couple of errors in the array diagrams on this update. The row in Sachsenschach with a final blank should not have it, those in Sachsenschach and Leapale with seven consecutive non-blanks should not have the seventh of them.

Charles Gilman wrote on Tue, May 23, 2006 02:48 AM EDT:
The definitions of these games is fairly open-ended. I can think of a few
examples if that would help.
	The front rank could have all three kinds of forward radial represented
by a noncapturing and capturing move. The cycle Pawn (orthog/diag),
Warder
(diag/triag), Lowlander (triag/orthog) fits this bill as does Yeoman
(diag/orthog), Broker (orthog/triag), Highlander (triag/diag).
	For the fill-in leapers of Sachsenschach one option would be Knights
(2:1:0) on the top level, Sextons (2:1:1) above the Bishops, Ninjas
(2:2:1) below the Bishops, and Camels (3:1:0) on the bottom level. This
would give a neat distribution of bound/unbound and biaxial/triaxial
pieces. I would be interested to know whether it would be helpful to add
this array as an example on the page. A similar combination but with
longer leaps would be Zebras (3:2:0) on the top level, Fortnights (3:2:1)
above the Bishops, Fencers (3:2:2) below the Bishops, and Legionaries
(3:3:2) on the bottom level.
	Leapale is an opportunity to go really wild. Following similar lines to
the previuos paragraph you could have an Elf at each corner with
Camel-Knight-Knight-Camel across the top and bottom and
Sexton-Ninja-Ninja-Sexton down the sides.

Jeremy Good wrote on Mon, May 22, 2006 07:34 AM EDT:
Hi, Charles, I think I would like to try my hand (one day or soon) at designing presets for these variants but I need more information about the different types of pawns on Unionschach and I want to know where the new pieces go on Sachsenschach and Leapale. Do you think you could give me this information?

List all comments and ratings for this item.

Add a comment or rating for this item.

The Chess Variant Pages is an amateur, hobbyist website that has been run by volunteers since it was founded in 1995. It focuses on documenting games based on, related to, or similar enough to Chess and on letting you play many of them.

Who What When Where Why Which How

Operating expenses are covered through advertising and donations. Help out by making a PayPal donation or by shopping with these affiliate links:

https://www.chessvariants.org/3d.dir/gilman6x6x6.html
First Created: Wednesday, April 14th, 2004
Last Modified: Friday, April 4th, 2008
File Timestamp: Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:32:42 -0500
[info] [links] [edit]