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This page is written by the game's inventor, Daniil Frolov.

10x10 game with some popular pieces

Cannon, chanselor, archbihop, camel... How chess variant with these pieces can be original? Yes, it can be original!

Setup

Board is 10x10, but have 4 additional citadels (camels starts here). They don't play special role in game. jcvewgdwevcj rnbmkqabnr sssssppppp ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- PPPPPSSSSS RNBAQKMBNR JCVEWDGWENCJ S - berolina pawn A - archbishop M - marshal J - camel C - cannon V - bow (vao) E - elephant (see below) W - war machine (see below) D - dragon (see below) G - gryphon (see below)

Pieces

Elephant leaps 1 or 2 squares diagonally.

-------
-x---x-
--x-x--
---E---
--x-x--
-x---x-
-------

War machine leaps 1 or 2 squares orthogonally.

-------
---x---
---x---
-xxWxx-
---x---
---x---
-------

Gryphon moves 1 diagonally, may continue moving orthogonally outwards.

--x-x--
--x-x--
xxx-xxx
---G---
xxx-xxx
--x-x--
--x-x--

Dragon moves 1 orthogonally, may continue noving diagonally.

-x---x-
x-x-x-x
-x-x-x-
--xDx--
-x-x-x-
x-x-x-x
-x---x-

Non-array piece gold general moves 1 orthogonally or 1 diagonally forward.

-----
-xxx-
-x0x-
--x--
-----

Silver general moves 1 diagonally or 1 orthogonally forward.

-----
-xxx-
--0--
-x-x-
-----

You can read descriptions of other non-standart pieces by clicking on thier names.

Rules

To castle, king moves 2 or 3 squares, rook leaps to next square.

Pawns may capture en-passant other pawns, berolina pawns and sergeants (see below). Same rules for berolina pawns and sergeants.

On last rank pawns promotes to friendly rooks, knights, marshals, gryphons, war machines, cannons or OPPONENT'S gold generals.
Berolina pawns promotes to friendly bishops, camels, elephants, bows, dragons, archbishops or OPPONENT'S silver generals.

One rule, wich i forgot to write before: when pawn or berolina pawn promotes to hostile general, opponent cannot move it on next turn. Before i written this, Daniel Roth suggested in comment different variant: when pawn promotes to hostile general, it may be dropped on any free square. Now both rules are optional, you can play with one of them or both.

The reason of promoting to opponent's generals is that capturing them gives bonus.

Pieces, moving both orthogonally and diagonally, only 1 of them in opening setup, (queen, amazone, gorgone, wildbeest, tank, squire, sergeant, plus GOLD and SILVER GENERALS) are special.
If other non-king piece captures one of them, it promotes (not optionally) to it's compound with pieces with orthogonal and diagonal moves swapped, plus camel and knight promotes to wildbeest.
Rooks and bishops promote to queens.
Marshals and archbishops promotes to amazones (amazones moves as rook, bishop and knight).
Gryphons and dragons promotes to gorgones.
Elephants and war machines promotes to squires.
Cannons and bows promotes to tanks.
Pawns and berolina pawns promotes to sergeants (it's very unlikely that sergeant is on pawns starting rank, but if it happens, it can make non-capturing double step in any forward direction, on last ranks promotes to any (friendly) above mentoided special pieces, but NOT to gold and silver generals).
If special piece is captured by king or another special piece, player may promote any piece to respective special piece. If there are only special pieces, that player wons the game.

Stalemated player loses. Bare kings are impossible.
Other outcomes (50 moves without captures and pawn/berolina pawns/sergeants moves, 3-times repetition and others) are not draw. Player with more points on board wins (plus, second player always have 0,5 points, wich covers second move disvantage).
Pieces values (they are used to determine winner of game in "other outcomes", i'm not sure that these values are close to real relative values):
Pawn - 1
Berolina pawn - 1
Sergeant - 2
Camel - 3
Bow - 3
Elephant - 3
Gold general - 3
Silver general - 3
Knight - 4
Cannon - 4
War machine - 4
Bishop - 5
Rook - 6
Wildbeest - 7
Tank - 7
Squire - 7
Archbishop - 8
Dragon - 8
Marshal - 10
Gryghon - 10
Queen - 11
Amazone - 18
Gorgone - 18

Notes

Variant, wich i don't like:
archbishop is replaced with caliph, wich moves as bishop or camel and amazone can move as rook, bishop, knight or camel.
Variant, wich i like:
Knight can move 1 orthogonally, camel can move 1 diagonally (like Omega chess wizard), and wildbeest can move as king. It's possible (and quite logical) to combine these 2 variants.
Another one variant: if king is in opponent's citadel and cannot be captured on next move, king's owner wins.


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By Daniil Frolov.
Web page created: 2010-08-17. Web page last updated: 2010-08-19