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The biggest difference from most Chess variants is that you cannot see where or what your opponent's pieces are. But you will be informed on which moves have been made and on which legal moves you have, which will give you some intelligence on what pieces your opponent has where.

So, it becomes a memorising game, just like memorising chess openings? 

So, it becomes a memorising game, just like memorising chess openings?

No, it’s more about figuring out your opponent’s position before he can figure out yours, and while a good memory can help, you can take notes or review past moves.

I made a couple changes to the rules.

First, being the passive piece in a swap does not count as a move. As long as a piece does not move under its own power, it may be swapped multiple times. The piece initiating the swap, though, will not be able to swap again.

Second, since the movelist already identifies the locations of the pieces that have already moved, these will now show up on the board, though their identities will remain hidden. Since the movelist also gives enough information for tracking each piece that has moved, I will look into marking each of the opponent's pieces with a unique identifier, such as the space it began on.

Since the movelist also gives enough information for tracking each piece that has moved, I will look into marking each of the opponent's pieces with a unique identifier, such as the space it began on.

I have now done that. Since this shows the locations of moved pieces, it somewhat diminishes the usefulness of the Spy. So I'm thinking of giving it the ability to detect enemy attacks by either not letting it move though check or not letting it move into check. I might also pair the Queen with the Decoy and the Spy with the Centaur or just make those extra options to leave the identity of the opponent's pieces more uncertain.

Since this shows the locations of moved pieces, it somewhat diminishes the usefulness of the Spy. So I'm thinking of giving it the ability to detect enemy attacks by either not letting it move though check or not letting it move into check.

Here is what I'm thinking of for the Spy. It would move like a Queen or a Knight, but it wouldn't be able to move to an attacked space, and it wouldn't be able to capture a piece with its own powers of capture. These restrictions would allow it to pick up on clues to the movement capabilities of other pieces. It would be weaker around strong pieces and stronger around weak pieces and a bit weaker than a Queen with the opponent's King. The restriction against capturing in the same manner as the piece it is capturing would substract eight from the Amazon's total moves, which is the same amount of extra moves the Amazon has over the Queen. And the restriction against moving to an attacked space would weaken it even further. But maybe I should reduce the strength of this exception, allowing it to move to an attacked space if it stops check against one's own King or is to the King's space. After all, a King is more important than a Spy, and the Spy could be allowed to sacrifice itself in extreme circumstances.

Here is what I'm thinking of for the Spy. It would move like a Queen or a Knight, but it wouldn't be able to move to an attacked space, and it wouldn't be able to capture a piece with its own powers of capture.

In the strict and literal sense, this second restriction would stop a Spy from being able to capture another one. While the inspiration for this version of the piece was the Chameleon from Ultima, and Chameleons cannot capture each other, I wasn't satisfied with this, and I've been thinking of ways that a Spy might capture another Spy while remaining within the spirit of this rule.

One thought was that a Spy normally moves to capture on a space where it is not attacked. So if a Spy could capture a Spy only on a space on which it is attacked, that would be a manner of capturing different from how the Spy normally captures. But I worried that this could lead to endless recursion, as one Spy function calls another, and they each keep calling each other back and forth. This kind of thing already seems to have been a problem in developing this game, as my code has sometimes generated infinite loops.

There wouldn't be an infinite loop if I gave a specific power for capturing another Spy, but if they were the same, the first restriction might keep them from being able to come in range to capture each other. Yet it would be arbitrary to give each one a different power for capturing the other. So what would work is something that is the same but asymmetrical. I recalled a game in which the inventor allowed one King to attack another by having them move the same as Chinese Chess Knights.

What I came up with is that a Spy may capture another by hopping over another piece on the same side. This easily works for radial moves, because the piece can be conceived as capturing like a Cannon or Vao. For Knight moves, I thought of the restriction that the Knight must jump over another piece belonging to the same player. These restrictions have the effect of making the Spy's ability to capture another piece appear as though the threat of capture is coming from another piece, which fits with the kind of sneaky, underhanded manner that I had conceived the Spy to be capturing in.

However, what I thought of for the Knight move is not completely assymetrical. There could be a position in which each side has a piece it could jump over to capture the other, and this could arise through moving the other pieces into position. One alternative would be to let it capture the other Spy with a Grasshopper version of a Nao move, in which it hops over an intervening piece like a Nao but can go no further past it than a single Knight leap. This would make it look like a Knight attack from the intervening piece, as it would be on the same side.

One further thought was to just make the Spy some kind of Cannon/Vao/Nao compound, but I think this would reduce its checking power enough to make it incapable of checkmating the King without assistance from a piece other than its own King, and I had conceived of it as a Queen-class major piece.

What I came up with is that a Spy may capture another by hopping over another piece on the same side. This easily works for radial moves, because the piece can be conceived as capturing like a Cannon or Vao. For Knight moves, I thought of the restriction that the Knight must jump over another piece belonging to the same player. These restrictions have the effect of making the Spy's ability to capture another piece appear as though the threat of capture is coming from another piece, which fits with the kind of sneaky, underhanded manner that I had conceived the Spy to be capturing in.

I have now updated the rules and the Game Courier preset to allow one Spy to capture another in this manner. I have tested the code by trying out various types of positions with Spies, and it seems to be working now. But due to the nature of this game, I cannot truly playtest it on my own. So I'll issue some invitations to play the game.

I added some Alfaerie pieces to this page and to the preset. Since I don't have a custom Alfaerie piece for the Decoy, I used an equesrex. Since I don't have one for the Spy, I used the spider. Like a spider knows what is happening on its web and how to move safely along it, the Spy gets intelligence on what is happening on the board and how to safely move on it. Also, spider starts with the same syllable as spy. But if someone designs some custom piece images for these, I might use them.

I am having concrns that the spy is too powerful. It is a very mobile piece that can very easily avoid capture. So I'm thinking of allowing it to capture on an attacked space, limiting its inability to move to an attacked space to empty spaces. This would give its intelligence a degree of fallibility. With this change, I would increase the attacking ability of the Decoy by not limiting the pieces its knight move can capture, which would let it check the eneemy king. I may try this in a new settings file, since I don't want to change the rules for ongoing games.

I combined my thoughts from last night with what was the alternate description for the Spy I had yet to try out and wrote up a new alternate description of the piece. While writing it, I covered one detail with more precision that should also apply to the current version. A spy cannot capture a piece that could capture it, which for the Pawn means it must avoid moving as one of its own Pawns when capturing one. This was coded incorrectly in this case, and I fixed it in the code of the current games. Fortunately, this bug had not led to any illegal moves.

One further tweak I'm thinking of making to the rules is to let the Decoy move to an attacked space next to its King. This would increase its attacking ability in the endgame, allowing a King + Decoy vs King game to play like a King + Centaur vs King game. But it would not decrease a player's knowledge about which spaces are attacked around the Decoy, because the King would still be unable to move to any attacked space next to it. By checking where both pieces can move, a player could still tell whether a Decoy move next to its King would be safe.

Another alternative I was considering is that a Decoy could move next to the enemy King. While this would also allow the Decoy to behave like a Centaur in a K+D vs K endgame, it would impair the Decoy's ability to avoid check and to detect the enemy King.

One more alternative I was considering was to allow the Decoy a one-time demotion to a Centaur. This would remove its disinformation sowing and intelligence gathering abilities and give it more attacking power. I even considered the idea of letting most pieces demote to lesser pieces, which could be an effective way to sow some disinformation when a piece is about to be captured, but that's probably going too far.

One further tweak I'm thinking of making to the rules is to let the Decoy move to an attacked space next to its King.

I have updated the alternative description of the Decoy to include this exception. Since there are no ongoing games of the alternative version right now, I updated the code to support this new exception, and I fixed some bugs concerning the movement of the Spy and Decoy. These changes did not affect the code for the earlier version, which does still have an ongoing game right now.

The author, Fergus Duniho, has updated this page.