Comments by Anthony Viens

Hello, long time lurker of this great site! 

I created an account for this years ago as akinfantryman.  I must have written down the email wrong, because I don't believe I ever got an email with the inital sign in information, and I have tried several times to reset the password over the years.  (it recognizes there is an akinfantryman account, but I can't access it.)  I just created this sudo-account, mostly to post this message....I would rather have my usual handle akinfantryman.  Is there any way to recover that account?

Thank you!

This is absolutely the best out-there/crazy idea I have ever seen for a chess variant.
I've spent hours lurking on  this site and have never seen anything else quite like it.

I have not actually tried it yet, so I only gave it a 'good' rating, but it looks awesome.  I have plans to make a physical copy...

Two thumbs up!

This is a really interesting idea!

The Fortress that is bigger on the inside is a good stand-alone idea; allowing it to move really changes things.  I wonder how easy it is to move the tardis and achieve instant checkmate?

One suggestion: shouldn't the main board, instead of being H-shaped, be a rectangle?  At the start of the game, 9x2 squares would be covered by the two tardises--functionally the same as your setup.  However, when a tardis moves, there would still be squares where the tardis started.  It makes more sense to me.

In the original version, I rather liked the idea of pawns with multiple-step promotions....however, in a game this big and complicated, it is probably best to simplify to one promotion per piece.

I like the idea of many weak pieces, which makes every game different.  Very nice!

This, sir, is crazy insane!!!

Very cool.  Just WOW.  New bucket list item: play full game of Jupiter with a physical copy.....

Very interesting.  I like the different moves on each board and how they relate to each other.  Nice job!

This has a lot of rather interesting ideas...however, I don't have quite enough information to attempt to play.  How exactly do you use blessings or curses?  Are they automatic, or take a turn?  Aimed at a piece?  I think you can you only use them when K/Q adjacent to a bishop....

Do you always move both knights on a single turn?

Dragons sound too powerful.  I think they would dominate the game.

All-in-all, interesting, but the rules are not clear.

INTERESTING.

Wow.  I like. 

Bishop moves are darn tricky.  They have an abundance of paths to take, I'm guessing they are valued approxamently the same as a rook.
Also, don't rooks tend to be more dangerous on a circuar board?
Consequently, the queen might be overly powerful.

I honestly think that there could be more peices to play with the different angles.

I think this has a germ of brilliance, but incomplete.  This definitly has some unrealized potential.

I rather like the idea.  Assuming fairly normal piece moves.

  I would expand the piece set to start some fairy pieces on the empty faces, myself.

Probably at least a decade ago, this was the game that lead me to chessvariants.com, due to a random link for the berserker pawns.  I lurked for YEARS, but finnally started posting comments.

Thank you for leading me here!  I've been inventing chess variants since I was a teenager, and didn't know I wasn't the only one!

Frankly, this is not a balanced variant.
But it has some of the coolest ideas on the site.  I've been tossing around various ways of using the ideas since I stumbled upon it.  Maybe someday I'll get something playable...especially the Bezerker Pawns!

So, there are 3 things I find interesting about this board.
1) It's a round board, with a way across the center...rare, but there are others.
2) The nexus allows for forking both top and flipside, even with a rook.
3) The nexus connection between top and flipside allows for some really interesting gateway interplay.  Unlike typical board squares, two squares may simultaneously be the target of a single move.

Unfortunately, the setup of army pieces does not take advantage of 1 & 2.  Having the topside all one color and flipside the other essentially neuters two thirds of what I find interesting.  Another variant is forming in my brain.....

I just have to say, this is a clever idea.  Very nice.

This has some very interesting ideas, but the end result feels a little much.  I'm not sure I completely understand the moving over full squares rule.

The historicity of this variant vastly increases it's importance....it's possible this is the beginning of pawn's double move, and the first appearance of a diagonal slider.  Very important.

WILD.  Wow....interesting idea.

I just stumbled on this page, and it's quite interesting.  (Very old, but still good.)  I am, however, very surprised to see the Lion listed as the most powerful piece.  If I needed a snap decition between Amazon/Lion I would have said Amazon on reflex....very interesting.

This is one of my favorite variants on the site!  Very well done.  I like the concept of the river as a barrier, but you didn't stop with that as a gimmick.  You also made the piece types work with the river!  There is an archer to shoot over the water, the ram could be too powerful but the river hampers it's deployment, and a catapult to toss pieces....great job.

Now, there are a few things I would do different (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I may design a derivative) but there is only one thing I think is not designed very well.

Why do you have 5 ranks on each half of the board?  Xiang Qi also has 5, but the pawns start on the fourth rank.  Catapults of Troy's pawns start on the second rank, and don't have an initial double (or triple) step.  I would venture to say this makes pawn development very very slow.  

Which would be fine, except I see absolutely no benefit from it.  The river already has a huge damper on pawn development/attacks, so even if you wanted to limit pawn interaction in the game it's already redundant.  Not to mention, slowing the game (particularly the opening) down for no actual change doesn't seem like a good idea.
It slows down getting the bridge builder into position, it slows down getting the Trojan Horse into the action...it also makes developing the bishops really awkward....Honestly, it makes everything except the catapult sadly out of position.  I'm afraid the opening of Catapults of Troy would devolve into catapulting most of your pieces close to the river just to save 30 turns of development.
Frankly, I think there is so much empty space eliminating only one rank from each side would still play almost the same.  Slightly shorter opening, sure, but nothing else. 
Again, all this would be OK, except I see no benefit at all.  Just an unnecessarily stretched opening.

Am I missing something?  Please inform me, if so.
(Maybe you like a long opening!  That's OK.)

I would allow pawn double step and eliminate one rank per side, personally.  I think that would speed up the opening tremendously and lose nothing--maybe lower the importance of the Catapult a little bit, but at the moment Catapults look too central to moving pieces.

All that being said, this is STILL an excellent game.   I can handle an unnecessarily long opening, so long as the rest of it is great!  One of the best on the website!

Interesting, ideas.  From a quick read of what I could see, it sounds somewhat long and drawn out.

Could we get the initial board setup uploaded?  It would greatly help comprehension.   :-)

How is the white knight (at the top of the board) reaching the middle square?  I don't see any path to it.

This is an awesome game, btw, one of my favorites on the site.

*Edit:* I guess the empty quarter-circle shaped non-space below the white knight is counted as orthogonically adjacent to the curved space the knight is occupying, and then diagonally away. It might be better to clearly say that empty squares can be counted as a space to be leaped over. I assumed they were just non-existent.

Aurelian Florea, I will try to explain why I like this variant.  

First, though; I generally don't like variants with one idea....if someone thinks of a cool piece and slaps down two per side on a 8x10 board (everything else standard chess) I usually find that uninteresting.  I may like the new piece, mind you, but I generally like a few new ideas in a game.  Preferably, the new ideas don't feel like a bunch of random new pieces stuffed on a board.  Bonus points if the new ideas work together.  

Basically, my favorite variants push the envelope away from standard chess, and work as a cohesive whole.

Catapults of Troy succeeds at both of those things much better than most.  The river terrain makes this very different from chess, but it functions as a cohesive whole because everything is based around that one thing--the river.  

1) The river is not a total barrier--Archers can shoot across it and the Trojan Horse can jump it.

2) The river is a 'promotion' line; after crossing it the Trojan Horse can drop the archer.

3) The bridge builder is the primary way across the river, essentially adding in squares for use.  Building the board adds a whole new, rarely explored, dimension to the game.  This also means there will be a great deal of variety between games, as the board varies in shape from game to game.

4) The catapult is a new, very different, very interesting piece.  (To me, anyway.)  But it's not just new and different--it acts as the alternate way across the river.  This keeps the game from becoming a one-dimensional game of attack-the-bridge-builder.

5) The ram is a new, different piece.  At first glance it appears to be a random idea, but that is incorrect.  It would probably be too overpowered, except for one thing--the river.  By limiting the number of files the ram can threaten to bridges, the river makes it possible to defend against it.  It would be difficult to use the ram in a different variant, without a river.
Honestly, I didn't like the piece at first.  Too powerful and game changing.  However, I eventually realized how the ram and river function together, and I cannot help but admire the cleverness of the design.  The ram requires the river to function properly, and yet has nothing to do with fording the water!  This adds another dimension to the river's usefulness.
I still wonder if the ram is a bit overpowered, though.  I'm tempted to say the catapult should not be able to toss it--it's a devastating piece.

You'll also note that it's a very lean game--Gary didn't add anything that didn't have something to do with the river, and he removed a bunch of usual chess pieces.  There is only six pawns, one rook, and the two bishops.  (The single Trojan Horse with archer inside is vastly different and more powerful than a knight.)

Excellent, different, and cohesively designed game.

 

It's not perfect, mind you.  Having that many ranks on the board weights the game too heavily toward the catapult for no good reason, IMHO.  It should be only 8x9, including the river.  (See my previous comment below.)  Archers should probably have less squares they can shoot, they are quite powerful.  The starting pawn structure seems arbitrary.  And I really feel that it should have a palace (like Xiang Qi, the inspiration for the river) where the Trojan Horse must reach to allow the horde of troops inside to dismount.

However, it's easier said than done.  I've fooled around with designing something like Catapults of Troy plus palaces, but it's giving me new appreciation for Gary's clean design. Having two driving ideas behind a variant (river&palace instead of just river) really multiplies the number of pieces.  It doesn't help that I have a tendency to throw everything and the kitchen sink at a variant....

One more time: it's an excellent, different, and cohesively designed game.

My one gripe is that Zillions of Games isn't letting me upgrade the program, so I haven't been able to play Catapults of Troy yet!