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Further to my previous comments, I have devised two variants compensating
for Knights and Pawns being overstrengthened relative to Rooks and
Bishops, and eliminating square-colour imbalances.
	Millstone uses a wraparound board, inspired by an add-on to Jim Aikin's
Five Up (under F, not 5, in the 3-d index) but even more effective alone.
Horizontal blocking of Rooks would be reduced and unblocked Bishops and
Unicorns would always have access to 24 and 16 other squares respectively.
To prove the end of colourbinding, a Bishop or Unicorn could reach an
orthogonally adjacent square in two moves - one two cells forward and one
two cells back, but the same way sideways.
	Haremschach arises from observing that the Raumschach King and Queen can
move triagonally - an Emperor and Empress in my terminology - and there is
no combination of two plain linepieces. There could be a version in which
all linepieces are combined - two Queens in the 2d sense (Rook+Bishop),
two Duchesses (Rook+Unicorn), and two Governors (Bishop+Unicorn). Pieces
with a Rook move are clearly not colourbound but nor are Governors:
consider a Unicorn move one step forward followed by a Bishop move one
step back!

Regarding Charles Gilman's [2003-05-25] comment, Jim Aikin called the (Bishop + Unicorn) piece a Wizard in his 2001 variant Five Up.

I consider the (Ferz + Unicorn) piece to be another interesting idea. First reference I can find to this piece: November 4, 2001, david moeser made posts #976 and #977 in Yahoo chessvariants, suggesting the Unicorn in Raumschach be replaced by a Ferzicorn.

Check out Emperor Raumschach.

It is a variant of mine which attempts to answer several of the obstacles of Raumschach.

The Emperor piece guarantees a checkmate position. While the Herald(Unicorn+Knight or Unicorn+Hippogriff or Unicorn+Wyvern) frees up the simple Unicorn from its triagonal pattern.

There's a Zillions implementation for those who wish to evaluate it themselves.

My Raumschach Revised preset has the correct alternation of colors on a (slightly wider) Raumschach board. I think I also managed to set up all the pieces correctly.

Please use my Person Information page to send me an email, if you find any mistakes. Later this month, I will try to get an editor to add a link on the game information page.

EDIT: Gave the new board the same green/yellow squares as Midgard Chess and increased the font size to 14. Got to thinking about an old 6x6x6 variant of mine and decided to post a (temporary) preset: link here. I don't know when I am going to find the time to playtest any 3D variants, but these two presets are not limited to their specific games - anyone can hit the [Edit] button on any preset to generate something new - you just have to rename and save your new preset.

Matthew, thanks for getting me involved in 3D Chess presets - I have a lot of unfinished business from last year. I have already emailed an editor, changes should be forthcoming.

The 5x5x5 board is treated by the old preset as a 5x29 board, with four files 'painted white'. My new 5x5x5 preset has a 5x33 board, with double-width files 'painted white'. In all cases the square colors were locked into the 5xSomething grid. My 6x6x6 game turned out to be easier to set up.

Using the Customize button, before sending an invitation, allows you to choose between Colors: 88AA88 FFFFDD (my colors for Raumschach Revised) and Colors: FFFFDD FF8000 (Matthew's orange). You can even bump the scale up from 65 percent to 75 percent, but that makes the board slightly wider than my 1280 x 1024 display. EDIT: Light/Dark squares also depend on your choice of Board: 10.01. or 01.10. My color scheme was originally chosen to go with Roberto Lavieri's elegant 'Galactic Graphics' pieces, in Midgard Chess. I may be using them in a 3D Chess variant someday.

I must confess that I have not paid much attention to PBM optional features, but I believe that the player receiving a move also has full 'Customize' options. Looks like the onlookers are stuck with the options chosen by the two players, though.

ATTENTION: the 3-D CHESS FAQ FILE contradicts this Raumschach page with the following information: 'Pawns promote on the back rank of the opponent's end-level. White Pawns promote on the fifth rank of Level E; Black Pawns promote on the first rank of Level A. Dickins notes that in capturing Pawns must move toward their promotion rank. The '3-D' application of this rule means that a White Pawn on Cc3 can capture on Cb4 or Cd4 (like regular chess) or on Db3, Dd3, or Dc4, but not Db2. (Db2 is upward but backwards -- toward White's back rank instead of toward Black's back rank.)'

NOTE: I have a text-file copy of Bruce Balden's two newsgroup posts on October 8, 1990. I believe that he has accidentally reversed the pawn promotion zones and that the rules originally given on this page are also mistaken. Here is one reason for believing so. Everyone agrees that a pawn on level 'C' must either remain on that level or move to an adjacent level: 'D' for a White Pawn or 'B' for a Black Pawn. But this means that a pawn on level 'C' will never promote (according to Bruce Balden). So I accept David Moeser's pawn promotion zones (the starting squares of your opponent's King, Knights, Rooks) as stated in the 3-D CHESS FAQ FILE.

ALSO: my Raumschach Revised preset has the correct alternation of colors on a (slightly wider) Raumschach board. The initial setup and co-ordinate system match the game information page.