Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Dec 18, 2018 08:26 AM UTC:
If you read what Christian Freeling has said about Grand Chess, you might buy the argument that Grand Chess is one of the most excellent modest variants. Late night ideas - am writing a reply about Hannibal Chess, and got sidetracked to a slight variant of Grand Chess which I will have to exorcise before I can go to sleep. (Sorry, Kevin, I'll finish your reply tomorrow. ;) In considering what Christian thinks about his design, I came back once again to the idea that the piece set is not complete until you use the 3 king + rook/bishop/knight pieces also. So Almost Grand replaces the queen with the centaur (N+K), the archbishop with the dragon bishop (B+K), and the chancellor with the dragon rook (R+K), and all else is as Grand. This army is a little weaker than Freeling's, mostly from losing the ability to leap over adjacent pieces. Clearly it works for all the Carrera-Capa variants, and might actually help those games a little by toning down the power of the queen equivalents plus losing the archbishop's ability to checkmate without the aid of any other piece. I admit that after playing Grand Chess, playing Carrera-Capa made me feel claustrophobic!
Now this is such an obvious idea someone must have done it before. Can anyone point me to such a game?
If you read what Christian Freeling has said about Grand Chess, you might buy the argument that Grand Chess is one of the most excellent modest variants. Late night ideas - am writing a reply about Hannibal Chess, and got sidetracked to a slight variant of Grand Chess which I will have to exorcise before I can go to sleep. (Sorry, Kevin, I'll finish your reply tomorrow. ;) In considering what Christian thinks about his design, I came back once again to the idea that the piece set is not complete until you use the 3 king + rook/bishop/knight pieces also. So Almost Grand replaces the queen with the centaur (N+K), the archbishop with the dragon bishop (B+K), and the chancellor with the dragon rook (R+K), and all else is as Grand. This army is a little weaker than Freeling's, mostly from losing the ability to leap over adjacent pieces. Clearly it works for all the Carrera-Capa variants, and might actually help those games a little by toning down the power of the queen equivalents plus losing the archbishop's ability to checkmate without the aid of any other piece. I admit that after playing Grand Chess, playing Carrera-Capa made me feel claustrophobic!
Now this is such an obvious idea someone must have done it before. Can anyone point me to such a game?