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While I might still try a four-color board, I have two reasons against using one. First, I already tried a four-color board when I created Cavalier Chess, and it was confusing to look at. Second, I wanted to use the colors of the British flag for the board, and it has three colors. I may still try a four-color board, because I've come up with the idea that the Dragons are elemental creatures who each move through one element. I could justify green as a fourth color, representing Northern Ireland and the element earth. Red would be fire, white air, and blue water. I think two Dragons per side are enough. I have deduced that a Queen with any two minor pieces can checkmate a lone Queen, and this includes two Dragons.
Moussambani wrote on Mon, Jan 20, 2003 07:03 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★Nice! Green for northen ireland is a must. I'd say no more dragons. Four dragons on the board, they'll never find each other. Looks good for me. You have no piece for northern ireland...
I just found the old coat of arms for Northern Ireland, and it shows a Lion and a Stag. I might think about adding a Stag to represent Northern Ireland. I found the picture at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/1648/tuaidh_e.htm
Playing against myself, I successfully forced a checkmate against a lone Queen with a Queen and two Dragons in 47 moves. To show that a Queen and two Dragons could force mate on a Queen, I played Black with full knowledge of my strategy, resisting it at every move. I might be able to force mate in fewer moves if I tried it again, as I was trying to figure out what to do while doing it. The trick is to force the lone Queen to move to the one part of the board where the two Dragons can work together to checkmate it. I started with the Black Queen on its initial rank, where the White Queen and Dragons could not touch it. But they could inch closer to it until it had nowhere to go except off its initial rank. To do this, the White Queen moved to the seventh rank, inched closer to the Black Queen, forcing it to the side, then a Dragon blocked the White Queen's line of attack on part of the seventh rank to give the Black Queen a space to move to. The White Queen could then occupy the last rank, keeping the Black Queen from returning there. The next part was to force the Black Queen down to White's initial rank. This was mainly done with the Queen, with Dragons moving mainly to avoid stalemate situations. Once the Black Queen reached White's first rank, the White Queen stood guard on the second rank to keep the Queen on the first rank. The Dragons then moved down for check and checkmate. If a Dragon was captured and returned through promotion, the place on the board where the Dragons can work together would be different, but the principles behind the forced mate would still be the same.
I'm not sure that British Chess needs another piece type, but it's always
fun to think about pieces.
I looked a little, and the only use of the Stag as a variant chess-piece I could find was in Fantasy Grand Chess' Druid Army, where it's a WH (Wazir + (0,3) leaper).
In general, quadruped-named pieces seem to be leapers or lame versions of leapers: Horse, Camel, Antelope, Gnu, etc. One sort of piece that British Chess doesn't have is a non-rider leaper, and that might be a nice addition to the mix. Perhaps the (as far as I know unnamed) combination of Knight and Zebra which occasionally shows up on large board variants? It's color-changing, which means that one is not enough for mate with the usual King, but powerful enough to be useful.
I might add a Stag to a future variant of British Chess, but I like the game as it is right now, and I have no Stag piece image anyway. I read on an Irish heraldry site that the stag is a peaceful animal that attacks only when provoked. So I thought of letting the Stag piece move as a leaper (maybe a Knight or an Alibaba) without capturing, or as a Queen (or maybe a hobbled Queen) when capturing, with the restriction that it can capture a piece only when it is attacked from the direction that the piece is in. This will usually mean that a Stag can't capture a piece unless it is attacked by it. But it will also be able to capture a piece that stands between it and an attacking Dragon. The idea is that the Stag is normally romping about in a peaceful way, but when it's provoked, it will charge at a piece with its full head of horns. The idea behind having it capture only as a hobbled Queen is that it needs a running start to ram an attacker. This would also allow the Queen to get close to a Stag. I think I could implement this piece in Zillions by using move-types to distinguish between attacks from different directions.
The move-type approach ought to work, although the attacked? tests might be a tad expensive. The Lion is another piece that might cause a Stag to attack a different piece. Adding Stags, while unnecessary, might make for a nice variant.
Carlos MartÃn wrote on Sat, Feb 1, 2003 04:21 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★Another way to make playable a game with a royal Queen would have been to restrict her movement within a 'Palace' (like the General in Chinese Chess), for example an area of 4x3 squares (from d3 to g1 for white); and make the Prince Consort confined to the Palace as well (like the Mandarins). The Queen could move exactly as in FIDE Chess and the Prince Consort exactly as the King. ------- The idea of 'country-themed' games seems to me highly original. I could imagine a 'German Chess' with Panzers, U-Boats and Zeppelins (and maybe a royal Kaiser), or a 'French Chess' with Musketeers, or a 'Spanish Chess' with Caravels, ...etc.
It is implicit in the rules that the Royal Queen cannot capture a Prince Consort from a distance. The Royal Quuen cannot move through check, and would be in check when it reached the adjecent square! If the Queen is already adjacent to the Prince Consort, it is already in check and may capture the Prince Consort if it is undefended.
A really good game--the pieces are unusual, but no so unusual that clarity is seriously compromised. The piece set works well together.
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, May 10, 2003 07:33 AM UTC:'The Unicorn represents Scotland...' Perhaps that is why the name was used in 3d Chess for the triagonal linepiece, whose forward moves viewed head-on form the saltire of Scotland's flag. After all, the Bishop's forward moves in 3d form a cross. As the largest populations calling the Bishop a Bishop are English-speaking it is likely that by now he would be Anglican anyway. The Japanese seem to think so as they call the plain Bishop an Anglemover - suggesting the Bishops of Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds, Ely, and Peterborough giving moving sermons to Anglian Anglicans! They call your enhanced Bishop a Dragonhorse - draw your own conclusions!
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, May 10, 2003 07:39 AM UTC:Correction, the Japanese call an even MORE enhanced Bishop a Dragonhorse. I just noticed your stipluation of not capturing orthogonally.
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, May 11, 2003 09:12 AM UTC:Another correction to my previous comments: apologies to Brazil. Among countries which call the Chess Bishop a Bishop rather than a Fool, Flagbearer, Elephant &c. I correctly discounted Portugal (population ca. 9000000) but forgot its former colony!
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 14, 2003 07:45 AM UTC:Your idea here of applying en passant to the highest piece as well as the lowest has given me an even more radical idea. How would Tout En Passant Chess, a variant on which all pieces can check or capture all enemy pieces in this manner, play? Presumably it would work best with a simple array of familiar pieces - the standard one perhaps, or the Bachelor Chess one with the King extended (see small variants). I would not suggest combining it with the array shown here! This is a good opportunity to tidy up my previous postings here. To sum up, the name of your Anglican Bishop is odd because the standard Bishop would be assumed Anglican in most of the English-speaking world, and the only Catholic-majority language calling the piece a Bishop is Portuguese. The translation of the Japanese name as Anglemover also suggests Anglicanism, as the denomination's name derives via England and Anglia from a tribe called the Angles.
'the standard Bishop would be assumed Anglican in most of the English-speaking world' I should have commented on this earlier, but in the United States there are 2.5 million Episcopalians (Anglicans) but almost 60 million Catholics. I know better, but most chess-players would be more familiar with Catholic bishops that Anglican ones. Most other Protestant denominations do not have a rank of Bishop at all.
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 21, 2003 06:57 AM UTC:All right, perhaps it would be fairer to say that the name Bishop can be interpreted either way (hence my preference for calling the Bishop+Knight compound a Cardinal, which not even Anglicans have!), and that the name of an ecclesiastical rank covers any denomination that has the rank. The standard Bishop would make a perfectly adequate 'Anglican Bishop' in the array shown. Where enhanced Bishops have a place is in small-board games with only one of each piece aside, but for those I suggest a Silverbishop (forward Wazir move added) or Silverider (forward Rook move added).
'Your idea here of applying en passant to the highest piece as well as the lowest has given me an even more radical idea.' Is this comment on the right page? I really don't know what you're talking about. The only difference between Chess and British Chess regarding en passant is which ranks it can happen on.
'the name of your Anglican Bishop is odd because the standard Bishop would be assumed Anglican in most of the English-speaking world' Besides the very good point that John Lawson makes, England was still a Catholic country when the English began calling the diagonal moving piece a Bishop. The Anglican church dates back only to 1536, when Henry VIII had England break with Rome. The modern Bishop had been added to Chess about 50 to 60 years earlier.
Anonymous wrote on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 07:24 AM UTC:Why quote me on what I have already conceded was wrong? My new line is that a name such as Bishop 'covers any denomination that has the rank'. If it's church history you want, here goes. The English bishoprics that were Catholic when that was England's established church became Anglican with the establishment, which is why Canterbury had archbishops in the Middle Ages and now has only Anglican ones. It is the current Catholic archbishopric of Westminster that is a post-reformation creation. It is entirely appropriate that a chess piece representing a spokesman for the old established church goes on to represent a sole immediate successor who is of the new one. Even bishopless Western denominations can ultimately trace their roots to Catholicism in its monopolist pre-Reformation days. The first Ulsterman I ever met was a Presbyterian with a surname meaning 'servant of the (Mediæval, and thereefore Catholic) bishop'! Names for the standard Bishop in other countries also fit in with their preconceptions of the British establishment, from the nepotism-dependent upper-class twit suggested by Fool to the oppressed indigenous underclass of imperial days suggested by Elephant.
Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jun 28, 2003 07:36 AM UTC:The comment immediately below is mine, in case you had not guessed!
'Why quote me on what I have already conceded was wrong?' For the sake of context. Anyway, I think you're really missing the point regarding the Catholic/Anglican distinction for the Bishop. Real Catholic Bishops take vows of celibacy. This is analogous to staying on only one color. Anglican Bishops may marry and have marital relations. This is analogous to being able to move on both colors. So, within the context of British Chess, Catholic Bishops have taken a vow to stay on one color, and Anglican Bishops have not taken any such vow.
'Real Catholic Bishops'? Anglican bishops are also catholic, as the line of apostolic succession remained intact when the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church.
I think you misunderstood what I said. I did not make any distinction between real and fake Catholics. My distinction was between real clergymen and game pieces with clerical names. I use the word Catholic in its most common sense, which is to refer to Roman Catholics. If people who are not Roman Catholic wish to call themselves Catholic for whatever reason, it is an internal matter that does not concern me. It does not change the fact that the word 'Catholic' is universally used to refer to Roman Catholics. And it is even commonly used to distinguish Roman Catholics from Anglicans, as when news articles tell about protestants and Catholics fighting in Northern Ireland. I have always understood this fighting to be between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, not between, say, Anglican Catholics and Methodists.
I'm sorry, I *did* misunderstand, but referring to the Church of England as catholic is not simply an internal matter. Because bishops left the Roman Catholic church to join the Church of England, the unbroken line of apostolic succession requires the Roman Catholic church to admit the validity of sacraments performed by Anglican clergy. This recognition is by no means automatically extended to Protestant denominations routinely. Of course, at least one sacrament, baptism, can be performed by anyone, even you and me.
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It'd probably be too powerful, but it might have been amusing to have made the Dragon a Nightrider too, making it a Rocket-rider or Squirrel-rider. With the current definition I would think it would be rather weak in the endgame.