#Chess Variants

[blake447]

Therapist: Klein bottle chess isn't real, klein bottle chess can't hurt you Klein bottle chess:

[flaxen-phoenix]

Deicide Chess

I was fucking around on some chess variant resource pages and found this tool called the Board Painter, which allows you to create your own setups for custom chess variants. I played around with it for a bit, searched through all the piece graphics, started toying around with them... and then I made the board 16x16.

Eventually, I ended up with a board that looked like this. 16x16, with no less than 25 unique piece types.

I call it "Deicide Chess", because God is dead and I looked him square in the eye as I pulled the trigger. Full rules are under the cut.

Before I explain the piece movements, here's a short glossary of terms that I'll use when describing them.

Step - Movement to an adjacent square. Notated with a dot in the destination square, or an X for capturing-only steps.

Slide - Movement along a straight path of unoccupied squares to reach a square that is not adjacent. Notated with an arrow that follows the path of squares.

Jump - Movement directly to a square that is not adjacent, ignoring any pieces that may be in the way. Notated with an arrow.

(X, Y) jump - When a piece makes an (X, Y) jump, it jumps X squares in one orthogonal direction, then Y squares in a different, perpendicular direction. X and Y can be swapped freely, so an (X, Y) jump is equivalent to a (Y, X) jump.

Orthogonal - Forward, backward or sideways, perpendicular to the edges of the board.

Diagonal - An equal amount of movement along two perpendicular orthogonal directions.

Forward - Towards your opponent's side of the board. (Backward, similarly, is towards your own side of the board.) For White, this would be moving towards the 16th rank of the board, while for Black it would be moving towards the 1st rank.

In any direction - Orthogonally or diagonally.

(Unless otherwise stated, and with the exception of the above definitions, "move" specifically refers to non-capturing moves, while "capture" specifically refers to capturing moves. "Giving check" refers to capturing moves that can only target a King.)

The King

Moves or captures by stepping one square in any direction.

Royal - If your King is threatened with capture, you are in check, and you MUST remove the threat. If you cannot remove the threat, you are checkmated and you lose the game. You may not willingly move into check.

Castling - Castling is done by having the King move two squares towards its Rook, then the Rook jumps to the square the King passed through. The King may not castle into, out of or through check, all squares between the King and Rook must be open, and neither the King nor the Rook used may have been moved this game.

The Queen

Moves or captures by sliding any number of squares in any direction.

The Rook

Moves or captures by sliding any number of squares in an orthogonal direction.

The Bishop

Moves or captures by sliding any number of squares in a diagonal direction.

The Knight

Moves or captures by making a (2, 1) jump.

The Pawn

Moves by stepping one square straight forward. Captures by stepping one square diagonally forward.

Head Start - May slide up to four squares forward if it is on or behind its starting rank. (For white Pawns, this only works if done while on or behind the 4th rank, for black Pawns, only on or behind the 13th rank.)

En Passant - If an opposing Pawn uses its Head Start to move past a square where your Pawn could have captured it, you may move your Pawn into that square, then capture the opposing Pawn anyway.

Promotion - A Pawn that reaches the other side of the board (the 16th rank for white Pawns, or the 1st rank for black Pawns) becomes any piece except for a King, another Pawn, a Drunk Pawn, or a Rookie.

The Archbishop

Has all the movement capability of both the Bishop and the Knight.

The Chancellor

Has all the movement capability of both the Rook and the Knight.

The Cannon

Moves like a Rook, but cannot capture like one. Instead, to capture a piece, there must be a hurdle of either color between the Cannon and its target, which the Cannon jumps over to reach the target. The Cannon may not jump if not capturing, and may only jump over exactly one piece per move.

The Archer

Moves like a Bishop, but cannot capture like one. Instead, to capture a piece, there must be a hurdle of either color between the Archer and its target, which the Archer jumps over to reach the target. The Archer may not jump if not capturing, and may only jump over exactly one piece per move.

The Time Machine

Moves and captures like a Queen, but three turns into the future. To do this, declare a valid square that the Time Machine will land on, then remove it from the board with three time counters. Every turn, after you make your move, remove a time counter from the Time Machine, then if there are no time counters left, return it to the board on the square that was declared three turns ago. Any piece in that square is captured, even if it's a friendly piece. The Time Machine threatens the square it's about to land on, even if there are still some turns left before it will land. Kings who are standing in that square are in check, and if a Sumo Wrestler could push a King onto the square a Time Machine is about to land on on the next turn, that King is in check.

The Champion

Moves and captures by stepping exactly one square orthogonally, or jumping exactly two squares in any direction.

The Wizard

Moves and captures by stepping exactly one square diagonally, or making a (3, 1) jump.

The Kitsune

Moves and captures by making a doubly-bent sliding move; first, the Kitsune steps one square in an orthogonal direction, then turns 45 degrees left or right and slides any number of squares (including 0) in the resulting diagonal direction, then turns 45 degrees left or right again and steps one square in the resulting orthogonal direction. The Kitsune cannot capture until the final orthogonal step.

To be Continued... (because I ran out of space for images on this post)

[the-chessboard-is-personal]

@yurimartyr sorry for the @ here's bishop car chess

rule ideas:

capturing a non-bishop piece does not hinder a bishop's movement as they run the piece over

knights can avoid being captured by bishops by jumping over the car

bishops can "pick up" at most one non-king piece, which can then leave the car on a later turn and move normally

if a bishop captures another bishop, both are removed but the cars stay as obstacles

(optional) cars have a 1/4 chance to be still drivable after a collision (bishop takes bishop), and can be driven by any non-king piece

context for other people under cut

[cassowary-rapture]

Thinking about chess again. The sort of thinking involved is very appealing -- like solving a math problem, but more creative -- and on top of actually playing it, there's studying it, solving chess problems, reading about the history of it and different players, watching matches and playthroughs, chess notation, etc. etc.

I was REALLY into it for a while but played variants way more than traditional chess, mostly what I thought was Chess 960/Fischer Random but was actually transcendental chess and Crazyhouse, which is super fun and chaotic

Chess 960/Fischer Random: Randomized back rank with 960 possible starting positions, thus the name. The king has to be between the rooks and bishops must be on opposite colors. Black and white's back ranks are mirror images of each other. Modified rules for castling

Transcendental chess: Randomized back rank with 8,294,400 possible starting positions. Bishops must be on opposite colors. Black and white's back ranks are not mirror images. No castling. First turn can be spent swapping two back rank pieces instead of moving

Crazyhouse: Captured pieces change color and you can use a turn to drop one on the board. Pawns can't be dropped on either player's back rank. Like a two-player version of Bughouse, where two games are played side-by-side and if you capture a piece, you pass it to the person playing the same color in the other game

Okay I was like "maybe this time I can actually memorize openings and get better at regular chess" but now I just want to play Crazyhouse again. It's ridiculous, especially when you've got more than two queens on the board. I wonder if I could get 10 queens...

The last time I played it was two games of traditional chess with T and I beat him hilariously fast. It took like five minutes total and I'm not even that good. I hadn't played in years, I've barely played traditional chess, and I never memorized openings or any kind of moves, so I don't even know what I did, really. He was just absolutely terrible at it for some reason

[thecringequeen]

This Idea is really interesting. As a romance lover myself, I wanna use my chess brain to analyize the actual intricacies of this.

The idea of this game really reminds me of chess variants on chess.com. Especially fog of war. Where you know what your pieces are, but your opponent doesn't but you get clues about where they are through the game. This is a very similar to fog of war, except, it's with a singular piece and you gain a queen when captured.

I think each rookmeo/juliet rook should be considered to be worth -9 points of material when captured but 5 points of material while just on the board. A very funny idea imo. Basically, if you capture the rook, you lose 9 points of material because your opponent gains a queen and loses a rook while you lose a rook.

Last night I dreamed that someone invented a new version of chess called Rookmeo and Juliet where two rooks are in love and trying to run away together. To achieve this they have to make it to the other side of the board, but these rooks don't have any visible signs to differenciate them from the rest, just a small mark in their base. Neither of the players knows what rook from the other side is in love with their rook, so they have to play a regular game of chess, fully aware that they might unknowingly kill the lover of their rook. If they kill it, the game keeps going, but their rook betrays them, switches sides and turns into a second queen for the other player. People wrote a ton of essays about the symbolism and metaphors of that version of chess and the creator didn't have the heart to tell them that he simply invented it because he thought Rookmeo was a great pun

[isoraqathedh]

The nightrider A test of the image-posting capabilities. Also this is the output of an old program I wrote ages ago that I have since lost.

[higgsbison]

Would sell my soul for the chess fic

10/10

the contract is sealed, have a preview of the next chapter

[paradoxspaceheater]

speaking of chess variants, i always thought this would be fun:

at the beginning of the game, each player secretly writes down the name of a piece (eg. e-pawn, light squared bishop, queen). this can be any piece other than the king. this piece is a TRAITOR on the opponent’s team. once each player has made at least 10 moves, either player may at any point choose to skip their move and instead reveal what they wrote and take control of the chosen piece of the opponent’s color. it acts exactly as though it were the same piece of their color. if the traitor can “see” the opponent’s king, it is in check as soon as the player reveals the traitor’s identity.

[blake447]

I might play around with it c:

has anyone made fractal chess yet

id love to see a mandelbrot set chess lmaoo

[blake447]

nD chess is now on android!

The apk is hosted on itch.io. future versions will be cross play compatible, and feature partial controller support. Now you can horrify your friends on the go!

[flaxen-phoenix]

Caissa's Crusaders, an RPG with chess mechanics.

Around this time last year, I got really into The Ouroboros King, and it made me want to try making a chess RPG of my own. So here's my idea for one: Caissa's Crusaders!

I haven't quite fleshed out the storyline, but I'm trying to brainstorm a bunch of variant pieces and make up movement patterns for each of them. I have a whole spreadsheet for it, as well as a mockup of the title screen. While I was brainstorming I mostly just scribbled random stuff on the piece base in GIMP to see if any cool shapes would make me think of a piece, and so far I've drawn about 130 of them.

I'm thinking the story would be about sentient chess pieces (who exist alongside humans) who do battle, and along the way, the player ends up going toe to toe with some sort of mysterious organization who uses 𝕰𝖛𝖎𝖑 𝕻𝖎𝖊𝖈𝖊𝖘 or whatever, and there'd be some sort of theme of deconstructing the fact that, when you're a sentient chess piece, your role in society is literally injection-molded into your body, but humans have no such restriction and are free to choose their destiny. Maybe some of your standard Yu-Gi-Oh! brand "if you lose the duel, you lose your soul!" type of stuff too. Also, checkers are the main currency of the game because they're also a game piece, but they look like coins. The boss battle pieces are currently Sisyphus, Midas, Icarus, Narcissus, Tantalus and Orpheus. I wanted to give them a "seven deadly sins" theme, with Sisyphus being wrath (in the legend, he was a cruel king who violated the custom of sacred hospitality), Midas being greed (obvious), and I'm not sure what the other sins would have been.

I'd love to hear you guys's thoughts on this, as well as some suggestions for other pieces to make. You can view the mockup of the title screen here and the list of pieces here.

[tropylium]

First phrasing makes a preeeetty wild variant, already because it turns any forced-counter-to-a-check just into immediate checkmate — your new basic school mate is 1. e4 e5 2. Qf3 Nc3 3. Qxf7# with Kxf7 forbidden. Also, everything will have to be double protected to prevent capture or enemy pieces moving in! I wouldn't be surprized if you could prove something like, mate-in-six for White from the starting position.

might be balancable, however, by removing checkmate and making the game end on capturing the enemy king; now to Qxf7+ and Kxf7 forbidden, Black then moves whatever else (say Nh3) while simply forbidding White from Qxe8#

Chess variant idea: you move as normal, but then you get to specify one move that your opponent isn't allowed to make

Or maybe they're allowed to make it, but have to make a sacrifice to do so. Maybe the sacrifice is "you can't forbid a move yourself". Maybe "you have to remove one of your own pawns or pieces" (that might in some cases be helpful, which I kinda like)

I suspect I'm good enough at programming to make this but not good enough at chess to playtest it well

[the-chessboard-is-personal]

interact with this post if you want to play a game changer inspired chess variant with me

[nem0c]

The standard game of Alice Chess is played using two boards, A and B. All pieces move as in standard chess. The normal array is on board A; board B starts empty. The rules are very simple. In turn, each player makes a single move on either board following these three rules: 1. A move must be legal on the board where it is played. 2. A piece can only move or capture if the corresponding destination square on the other board is vacant. 3. After moving, the piece is transferred to the corresponding square on the other board. Since a square and it's corresponding square on the other board are never both occupied, Alice Chess can actually be played on a single board. Checkers are placed under pieces that are on board B. I don't know if this makes moves easier or harder to visualise.

[marlinspirkhall]

This is actually much simpler than I anticipated, but I'm furious to learn that I should have been saying "Spock moved the attack board" in fics this whole time.

[anarchychess]

Discord placed onions along their twelfth rank, Reddit planted pea shooters along the L-file aimed directly at Tumblr's pieces because "we cant loose against tumblr for fucks sake", and BlueSky took the L with their horsey.

Your move, Tumblr.