Comments by DavidCannon

I'm not finished yet.  I have a few more images to upload and some polishing to do before the game is ready for publication, so I would respectfully ask the editors to postpone publication until I've finished (in 24-48 hours or so).  Thanks!

Note to editors: Could you please link this to the description page (http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSwindowschess) under the "See also" section? I don't know how to do it:-(  Thanks!

Note to editors: I'm more or less finished now.  I don't know how to link it to the zillions file under the "See also" heading, so I'd be grateful if you'd do that fore me.  Thanks!

I like this concept. Pieces can suddenly "come out" as something else. I suppose this could be called a variant of chess with incomplete information — as the "true identity" of each player's pieces is known to the respective players, but not to their opponents. At the same time, cloaking forces the player to decide in advance which piece will morph into what, preventing arbitrariness. 

I still don't understand how the Charging Elephant is supposed to move.

I like the game, but I question whether it belongs on this website. To me, a chess variant must meet the following criteria : 

1. Played on a board with multiple cells.

2. Diversity of pieces. In other words, pieces of different types that move and/or capture differently. That is why go and draughts/chequers don't qualify, and I don't think Amazons does, either. 

3. Royalty — there must be a piece (or pieces) whose survival is indispensable. Again, go, chequers, and Amazons don't qualify. Arimaa perhaps does — just : if you lose all eight rabbits, you lose the game. But to have eight royal pieces seems a stretch, so that's why I've said "perhaps". 

I'm aware that this website has a "crossovers" section, which allows for games that have borrowed ideas from chess. Cheskers is a good example. It fails the royalty provision, but meets the diversity provision and therefore qualifies as a crossover. But Amazons fails on both counts, in my opinion. 

I'm delighted to see a variant based on triangular cells, rather than squares or hexagons. Not that there's anything wrong with squares and hexagons, but that triangles are under-explored and under-exploited. Christian Freeling and Graeme Neatham invented several trigonal chess games, and I contributed a couple of my own (Rotorblades Chess and Rotorblades Fusion Chess). And of course there's Klinzha. But for the most part, inventors seem to give triangular boards a miss. 

I see that Chessagon tries to be as faithful as possible to traditional chess. That's one "pole" of the chess variant universe; the other "pole" is games like Arimaa, which barely qualify as chess variants. My own taste is for something in the middle —I like games that extrapolate the moves of the traditional pieces to the new geometry, but also introduce pieces that take advantage of the new geometry in a way that the familiar pieces cannot. The only piece of this nature to do so in Chessagon is the Duke, and I think there is room for more unusual pieces that would create interesting possibilities for play. 

Hi Silvia! Thank you for introducing us to this exotic blend, which is one of the best I've seen. I've seen a few east-west hybrids before, and even tried inventing a couple of them myself, which I never published here because I didn't like them very much — they seemed to be neither fish nor fowl. But yours blends them in a way that doesn't seem forced or stretched, and I really like that!

This is very similar to a game that I have conceptualized, but never published. My own game starts with the usual 8x8 square board and the pieces arranged as usual, with all the usual rules of play, except that in lieu of moving a piece, either player may move an unoccupied square. A square may only be removed from the edge of the board (an edge cell being one with less than four orthogonally adjacent cells) and placed orthogonally adjacent to another cell.

I have a (general) rule of not publishing things here until I have programmed them for Zillions. I'm a mediocre programmer at the best of times, and when it comes to creating cells that may be moved by either player, I'm stuck. I've worked out how to make cells that only one player can move, but making them neutral and moveable for both sides is something I've had no success with. 

I've thought of a similar game based on moveable hexagons.

Anyway, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to have thought of a game with a "dynamic" board.

I don't usually like games with different armies, but this is an exception. You've put a lot of thought into making a game whose different armies are not unevenly matched. For sure, the Spartan side lacks a Queen and its army appears to be slightly less powerful, but that is compensated for by the presence of two kings, both of which must be checkmated/captured. 

Great idea. I have always loved Fischerrandom Chess, but I really don't like the way it gives players no control over where their pieces start. I also consider Fischer's castling rule to be cludgy and it's hard to believe that a man of his genius came up with that. Your project fixes those shortcomings. 

One tweak I'd make if it were up to me is to require both players to enter ALL their pieces before making any other moves. White would enter a piece, followed by black, and they'd take it in turns to enter pieces, one at a time, until the first and eighth ranks were full. Of course, Bishops must be required to be on different coloured squares. 

Welcome to our two new editors. It's great to see some new blood. 

Next step : see some new blood in terms of contributors, not just editors, too. I'll try to find time to design a new variant or two myself, if I can get some letup from my 70-hours a week job, but I'd also love to see a lot more game designers get on board.

You mention that Jetan has long fascinated you. But I see few parallels between this game and Jetan. Can you please explain the connection and/or inspiration?

I'm pleased to see this game! One correction : it is a trigonal, not hexaxonal, chess variant. The cells are triangles, not hexagons.

That said, I think this is an excellent contribution to the much under-explored trigonal tiling. Apart from a couple of games contributed by Graeme Neatham and Christian Freeling, along with a couple of my own, I think this is a little-used tiling which has lots of interesting possibilities for play.

Do the "crowned" pieces become royal? I.e., do they gain ONLY the movement capabilities of the King, or do they have to be checkmated along with the King?

Ed. note: I've moved this to the Kingsmen thread on the assumption that was what was intended. Please let us know if this is the wrong place; it was originally posted as a comment on the home page.

I love the concept of spherical chess. I think one thing needs to be changed, however. Chess is already drawish enough on a square board, and more so on a round board. On a spherical board, where pieces move in all directions, draws may become the overwhelming norm. That is not my preference.

So, on a board like this, I would love to see something done about that. Possible ways to do it would be to put some restrictions on the movement of the King (as in XiangQi and Janggi), or to immobilize the King when in check, or to take away the King's ability to capture pieces, including attacking pieces.

Could we get some info on how the non-FIDE pieces move? Thanks.

A good concept, but it needs improvement. I don't like having only one Bishop, as it can reach only half the cells. It's a colour-bound piece, so we really need two. To avoid attacking non-pawns on the other side, perhaps enlarge the board and put a "hedge" of pawns around each army — I don't see that there needs to be only two of them.

This is an excellent concept. There's just one tweak I'd like to see. Pawns on the a-file cannot move any further to the left, so that could be a problem. One way to remedy that might be to divide the board vertically down the middle, giving pawns on files A-D a move to the RIGHT, and on files E-H to the LEFT, as you have currently done for all pawns.

Hi Rose. I like this game! I have one question though. You said, "Queens have the movement options of both rooks and bishops" — I cannot quite understand that, as a Bishop (in this game) cannot access any square that a rook cannot. Could you please clarify? Thanks :-)

I really like this concept. To me it seems like a great Chess-Arimaa hybrid. I don't know whether you consciously considered that, but the Centurions function much like the Rabbits in Arimaa, whereby you win by getting a Rabbit to the other side, or by capturing all of the opponent's Rabbits, with the last Rabbit effectively becoming royal (although it is not defined that way, losing it means losing the game).

I have often thought about how to bring about a synthesis of Chess and Arimaa, but have never been able to come up with a concept that satisfies me. YOU have done so, however. Thanks!