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Comments by JorgKnappen
Concise Guide to Chess Variants. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I love the name Dullahan very much. It has inspired a new experimental army for CwdA, named the Fearful Fairies, to be pulished here soon.
Drunken Nights. A toned down version of the Nutty Knights for Chess with different Armies. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Yes, backwards as a King means 3 directions, and no, forward as a Knight are all 4 forward directions, not only the two 'fast forward' directions.
To the other question: Only the Drunken Night and the Charging Paladin mentioned in the notes section are new pieces, the others are the original pieces from Ralph Betza's Nutty Knights. The Nutty Knights page also has movement diagrams.
To the very first comment: The crippling of the Charging Knight is intentional. The fact that a Charging Knight and a King can checkmate a solitary King has dramatic influence to the endgame. Replacing the Charging Knight by a Charging Moo leaves the endgame value untouched, and I doubt that the weakening in the opening phase and the middlegame is sufficient to tone done the Nutty Knights enough. But I have not playtested your proposal. As I said in the notes, there are lots of possibilities to weaken the Nutty Knights, if you find another one, it is fine.
Sigh, you are right, and I cannot correct the mistake because of umlaut problems I cannot edit the page any longer. I defintely did not want to change the Colonel in this army.
Finally I found a work-around that allows me to update the information here, editing in the missing user name to submission form. The forward Ferz move is now added to the Colonel, as it should be. The piece I inadvertedly created, the Charging Chancellor, may also be of the right strength to tone the Nutty Nights down. An army with srunken Nights and Charging Chancellor together will probably already being on the weak side, but inside the error margin of my estimates. Grandmasters of the Nutty Nights may prefer this very weak version.
Official Football Chess. Variant from the 1960's with pieces replaced by football players. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]This is a double excellent for this game. The first excellent goes to Hans for digging this game out and posting it here. The second goes to the game design: The inventor has really thought hard of the initial position, and it makes a fine game. There is a lot of tactical tension in the setup, but there are no obvious exploits. Great game!
Turkish Great Chess VI. Large variant adding an Archbishop and a General (Amazon). (10x10, Cells: 100) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Here are Turkish Great Chess II-VI, but there is no Turkish Great Chess I. Does it hide under another name, or why is it missing?
Chess 2. Different armies, a new winning condition, and duels. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I received the rule book and I like the many ideas in chess 2. It is an interesting game to remember where did I see rampant elephants before? Nemesis? Nice food for thought!
Hi, Charles, I think you are supposed to follow the link and undergo the 'purchase' procedure, as there is currently a special offer at $0.00 for this nice chess variant. There is far too much in it to summarise it here in a comment. There are 6 different armies (one of them the FIDEs), and each of the new armies is equipped with 'mutators' (as George terms it) that still feel fresh and unusual. Besides the new armies, the general rules are extended by new ways of winning the game, bringing down the number of draws, and duelling (introducing a poker-style element). So Chess 2 is different even with FIDE vs. FIDE armies.
Carpenter. compound of Knight and Dabbaba.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]As far as I can see, the name 'vicount' (without an s) is indeed Peter Aronson's invention. The piece itself is absent from Derzhanski's list ( http://www.chessvariants.org/piececlopedia.dir/whos-who-on-8x8.html ) and from Töws' Generic chess piiece creation system ( http://www.chessvariants.org/unequal.dir/genericchesssystem.html ). I recommend a look into the latter for some other names for rarely used pieces like Boxer (Commoner + Beaver) or Foursquare (FNLJG in Betza notation, L is Camel, J is Antelope, and G is Tripper). Derzhanski's list also gives sources to games, Töws obviously draws from similar sources, but does not give them.
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Currently, there are no pieces in Chess with different armies that can create such kind of situation. When someone designs an army with such kind of piece (and a very strange piece it must be, your anti-cannon is not sufficient, because the King is in check before castling and rule 0 forbids castling out check. Thus, an anti-cannon on Dabbaba lines is required. A Dabbabarider is also insufficient, because the King moves exactly 2 spaces in castling) the designer has to add a special rule to cope with the situation.
Drunken Nights. A toned down version of the Nutty Knights for Chess with different Armies. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Thanks for your comment. I estimate the Remarkable Rookies on the stronger side compared to the FIDEs, bit inside the error margin: I rate the Short Rook 4 Points, the Half Duck 5 Points, the Woody Rook 3 Points and the Chancellor 9 Point (half point less than a Queen), giving a total of 33 Points. Thus the Rookies are halfway between the FIDEs and the original Nutty Knights in strength.
Ralph Betza gauges his armies based on play between humans, this is an important point. Human chess masters play the FIDEs much better than the different armies, therefore there FIDEs have a bonus, and the unusual pieces have a malus. Thus Ralphs estimates are still valid for human players, unless we have grandmasters of Chess with different armies.
Concise Guide to Chess Variants. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Some more piece names. Most of them can be found in the Schwalbe list http://www.dieschwalbe.de/lexikon.htm or on Jerome Grimbert's site http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pieces/indexa.html Saurians: cK - Atlantosaurus cQ - Dinosaurus cB - Brontosaurus cN - Hippopotamus cR - Mammoth Combinations with a pawn: p+B - Griff p+N - Dragon (german: Drache) p+R - Ship (french: Bateau) p+L - Lama (L is Camel in Betza notation ...) p+D - german: Hornochse (literal translation Horned Ox, meanig Blockhead) Maybe we could call it Hornox in english? Sea pieces: sea-K - Poseidon sea-Q - Sirene, Mermaid sea-B - Nereide sea-N - french: Hippocampe (sea horse). In fact, a sea-Moo. sea-N - french: cavalier marine (sea knight) truly hippogonal piece, almost useless on 8x8 sea-R - Triton Some other pieces: The Camelrider has a special french name: Mehari The Taxi is a pawn with an additional backward move, it can go up to 3 steps forward from the first rank.
I don't think all the Saurians were named by one person at one time. don't have sources to early problems for the saurians, but I suspect the Hippopotamus even predates the term saurian. Note that also the locust (an old problemist piece) is technically a sauiran (a saurian grasshopper).
Sigh, I always get confused by grasshopper/locust, because the two terms are too close semantically, and I rarely do something with one of these two pieces. Charles' description of the two is perfectly right. Locusts take by overhopping, while grasshoppers are restricted korean cannon-style pieces. Sea pieces are locusts with additional non-capturing moves.
Hi George, I think the mating number of the quintessence is 2. Even a single quintessence comes very close to a mate, but it cannot strike the final blow to the enclosed King.
The idea of a re-charging piece is hidden in the Nutty Knights army from Ralph Betza's Chess with different armies. The charging pieces there have many forward moves, but very poor retreating moves. A re-charging piece turns 180 degrees upon reaching the 8th rank, and another 180 degrees upon reaching the first rank again. A Charging Rook, e.g., becomes a Reverse Charging Rook, moving forward as a King and backward and sideward as a Rook and the 8th rank. On promoting a pawn, you get a re-charged piece with full retreating power and poor forwardness. I wonder how much this change would power-up the Nutty Knights. One can also imagine re-charging pawns, walking up and down as pawns with no hope for promotion ... For the physical representation, balck and white Shogi-style pieces may work fine where colour indicates the ownership of the piece and direction the charged state.
I don't understand how you derived the number 6 for the Spearman. In fact, it has no backwards capture move and once the opposing King has broken the line of Spearmen, no number of them can mate. Maybe you want to say that a fox-and-geese style game with 6 Spearmen and a King vs. a lone King from some initial position is won, but this something very different.
Capablanca's chess. An enlarged chess variant, proposed by Capablanca. (10x8, Cells: 80) (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]An excellent to the new battle of the goths! I lurked in for some times and was impressed by the performance of Bihasa. It really played Chess with a capital C, where the other programs I watched merely engaged in tactical encounters. The game I saw, it first exchanged it knight for a bishop (favorable exchange on 10x8), then it placed its other knight at an outpost on the 5th line in the center, annoying the opponent who mussed the chance to exchange it -- Bihasa quickly protected the square where an exchange cound happen afterwards. It protected its bishop pair, built powerful pawn formations and won the game after dominating from the late opening phase.
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Here is a fun case to consider: Black owns an Eagle (a problemist piece; it moves on queen lines until it meets a hurdle, turns 90 degrees on the hurdle and ends capturing or non-capturing on a square besides the hurdle). Now black has a King on e8 and an Eagle on g8, white has a King on e1 and a Rook on h1. After castling, the field f1 is attacked by the Eagle, because the King on g1 now acts as a hurdle.
On Designing Good Chess Variants. Design goals and design principles for creating Chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating][23] All squares are essentially equal, there is no terrain to consider. This criterion draws a line to war simulation games, where land, water and cities play an important role. Xiang Qi mildly violates this one.
Chess with Different Armies. Betza's classic variant where white and black play with different sets of pieces. (Recognized!)[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Wow, this is a really intresting result. Now I wonder how the Woody Rook aka Wazaba (WD compound) does in the end game against a Rook. I felt it was too clumsy in certain endgames with some pawns against a Knight and replaced it with the Phoenix aka Waffle in the Fearful Fairies army ( http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSfearfulfairies ).
On Designing Good Chess Variants. Design goals and design principles for creating Chess variants.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Back to the terrain question: a promotion zone does not constitute terrain for me, also the forward direction of pawns is not dictated by terrain. Holes in the the board are somewhat strange to Chess and may constitute terrain. Barriers of all kind are certainly terrain. Possible terrain effect are: Difficult terrain (mountains, swamps) slowing units (pieces) down or forbidding some kind of pieces (two heavy to move there ...) on that terrain, land/water distinction (land units need boats or bridges to cross the water, water units cannot move on land (but maybe shoot units down on land), air planes can operate both on land and water, but need to land after some time and need airports or carriers for this purpose), cities (providing supplies fo any kind, generating new units, allowing of repair of damaged units). This leads to another chess criterion [24] A chess piece is either fully functional or captured, there is no such thing like 'damage' or 'health' with consequences to the piece (slower motion, need of repair, easier capturability). Of course, a bad position (e.g. pinned) does not count as damage. In FIDE chess the only (very mild) violation of the no damage rule is the loss of castling rights.
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