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Hi Aurelian
My opinion would be just one man's, and I'm relatively new to chess variants myself. Fergus may be right in that familiar pieces may give a game a head start as far as being more accepted, say in becoming heavily played on Chess Variant Pages' Game Courier (possibly with some time needed for a game to become more and more popular). That's if you take the trouble to make a Game Courier preset for your game. It might encourage you that I'd guess Shogi (Japanese Chess) may have seemed a little strange to people right after it was first invented, as far as having certain pieces with asymmetrical, complex movements goes (e.g. the Gold & Silver Generals). The road of a pioneer or inventor is not always a smooth or sure one. I've felt in my gut that chess variants I've invented may excite people, only to change my mind later in a lot of cases (though I'm prone to changing my mind a lot, anyway). As far as my tastes go, I like games with fairly simple rules, boards and piece movements, but there are a lot of people who play what I think are strange or uninteresting chess variants, at least on Game Courier.
Let's not forget the context I was speaking in. I was speaking of what it would take for a game to replace Chess as the #1 Chess variant in the world. As long as that is someone's design goal, I am going to apply strict standards in evaluating its chances of meeting that goal. By no means does this mean that other Chess variants are not worth playing or that Chess is my personal favorite Chess variant. If I held those opinions, I would not be running this site.
@Aurelian
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I have found it thanks :)! For both of you, Carlos and Fergus!
Aurelian, I always thought that bughouse was usually considered a "wild and crazy" mostly blitz-timed game - the sort of thing people don't analyze but just enjoy watching in action. Are you trying to develop a more formal turn-based version of bughouse? Personally I was never a huge fan of it because of the uncertainty of talking rules, the timing of the exchanges, etc. but will enthusiastically discuss these things if you're trying to create a more standardized version of bughouse that people could actually go back and analyze.
What do you mean by ladybug? Is that a current variant or you're just talking about what it could be called?
First I'm not sure why my original title for the subject has not held.
Anyway Jeffrey thanks a lot for discussing it.
Yes, I mean a new game indeed with more formal time controls (which we can establish), but the crux of the matter was to design a game with that in mind along with other features which should define nextchess. The disadvantages of "classic" bughouse is exactly what has got me into this. But the concept of a 2vs2 seems intriguing to me. It is just poorly executed here.
Ladybug is the name of a supposed to be a variant, or more likelly a class of variants, as I think new bughouse should be (it's just my taste though), but more female friendly (hence the "lady" part)
. I think ladybug is a small insect.
Because it is a difficult task I decided it's better to make it a team effort. Ex-president Kenedy was not there for no reason either.
Short story I strongly believe that the computer almost AI era needs a reformation in what we call chess.
I think it's cool that you want to make it more female-friendly, but I'm not sure that the name change and having teammates sit across from each other is necessarily enough (or apparent enough to cater to female players). Nevertheless I do still like those two ideas. It's a nice combo of "lady" and "bughouse."
I'm not too concerned about specific time controls as much as move order rules. I'm not sure what other bughouse variants there are, but my understanding of the present form is that two games are running on their own time, and each player just suddenly receives the captured pieces from their partner's game, available to drop. Without a specific move order it's a lot of wild and crazy luck and/or waiting strategies (unless I'm missing something about the normal bughouse rules).
I will add that I like the 8 stone chess idea. Maybe the 8 stones (or however many you use) can be the job of the teammates. One person gets the pieces, the other gets the stones.
For what it's worth, here's a link to a CVP page showing games invented by one of the (possibly few) female members of CVP. Granted, the games may not reflect what the vast majority of female chess variant players might wish for in CVs that they would often play:
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Kevin,
I personally would be interested in finding out if there is room for variants like apothecary chess which use weird pieces like the griffin, aanca or zebra (which is weird enough on a 10x10 board). I think there is.
Chess has some arbitrary aspects to it like en passant and castling, but they complete the game.
One of the cristicisms brought by Fergus to my variants was that they don't use "classic" fairy pieces like the marshall and archbishop, and the regular knight (by indicating gross chess as an better alternative to my apothecary). My point here was to enhance chess by adding new pieces and expanding the board. If I failed please state that, I could stop!