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I remember seeing a reference to a game called Atlantean Barroom Shantraj, but now a search turns up no results. Has anyone seen mention of this or did I just dream it up?
A search for *Atlant* on the Game Courier Game Logs will turn up the only game of Atlantean Barroom Shantraj being played here. The term 'Atlantean Shatranj' originated on Joe Joyce's Two Large Shatranj Variants page. My 2006-03-17 comment on the 'Shatranj 2 Chess' thread refers to yet another variant (on an 8x8 board).
Thanks. The motivation for my inquiry was that I ran across the entry for Atlantis Chess, which made me recall the Game Log for Atlantean Barroom Shantraj and wondering what the results would be like if the two games were combined...
Well, you'd certainly want a large board, so starting at 10x10 is good. Since all the pieces in this game jump (but not [currently] the pawns) the effects of square loss would be effectively reduced. You might even want to let the 'High Priestess' replace (or even add) squares. And if you did that, you might let the 'Minister' destroy squares. Their ranges would logically be any empty squares they could legally move to. They would cancel each other out at squares within the range of both. But letting the Minister destroy occupied squares would swing the game far over to offense, unless, maybe, you allowed the High Priestess to resurrect... Anyway, that the 2 pieces have limited movement (for ABS) is a decent limitation for pieces that can create or destroy squares. The priestess could extend the board; a decent restriction would be that a square surrounded on 3 of 4 sides by emptiness cannot be connected to a square that will have more than 1 side next to emptiness. So bridges would have to be 2 squares wide. This particular application of player power over the board probably pushes well into the shallows of the Rubicon itself. This is terrain in a wargame. But it is true that holes are as good a terrain abstract as squares. How many chess variants have specific pieces that create or destroy the board itself? That destruction of squares could well be going too far, especially since this is not a wormhole variant we're talking about. That would be a different game.
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