Comments by Martin Nilsson

Did the following writeup to further explain my design thinking for this game:

Problem: Large variants easily become too complex for (average) human players to handle skillfully, and too sharp. Having too many strong pieces while keeping the standard king increases the probability of an early check mate.

Solution: Keep the standard pieces, but apart from that, introduce only short and medium distance pieces into the game. This will generate some localized situations of lower complexity.

Problem: Having only a single chain of pawns in a large variant decreases the density of pawns compared to standard chess. The pieces proper will easily stomp through the pawns' defence line. But having partial or whole double pawn chains makes it tedious to develop pieces, among other things.

Solution: Introduce a few Shields into the game, which kind of serve as a mobile pawn replacement.

Problem: Long leapers feel at home on a large board, serving a similar function as the Knight on 8x8, but they can have too powerful forking ability behind the opponent's pawn chain, especially in the early opening.

Solution: Move the pawn chain up to the fourth rank. Make the third rank consist mostly of empty space.

Problem: On a big board, shorter range pieces can easily become stranded in irrelevant areas of the board during the endgame. A stranded Kjempe could in practice be worth much less than 5 pawns.

Solution: This is actually somewhat of a feature. It will be a strategic element of the game to try to predict where the action will be, and move short range pieces there in time. Just make sure that the opening is sufficiently dull that all pieces have time to come into play.

Problem: What does a large variant bring, other than more of the same?

Solution: Make sure the new pieces contrast each other and the old ones, and that pieces can threaten each other assymetrically (either through different movement patterns, or by a defended weaker piece attacking a stronger defended one). Allow for a larger number of quasi-equal exchanges than standard chess, leading to various kinds of assymetric endgames.

Problem: Bishops are pointing at the rooks in the initial position.

Currently no solution: Yes, this is a problem which limits the opening possibilities a bit. At least fortunately the third pawn from the edge is triple defended... At one point I had the Kjempes starting at d3 and i3 to obscure the bishops, but I found this led to more kludginess in the opening.

To the site maintainer:

My problem with not being able to edit my pages is back. When I click "Edit this page", I get an edit page where the field "Your UserID:" at the bottom is blank, and if I fill in my password and try to save the page, it says "You cannot edit this page without a UserID."

I think the problem is that I'm somehow being logged out when clicking the "Edit this page" link; that has happened to me occasionally when clicking other links on the site too.

I've tried different cookie permissions and browser security levels. I'm using Microsoft Edge, but I've tried with Google Chrome or Firefox too, same problem. I can still post comments, as well as post new entries, apparently.

Big changes to this game.

I changed the moves of the Kjempe and Custodian to give them a more realistic ability to participate in an attack. They are now both supposedly worth as much as a rook.

I also changed the initial position to avoid the bishops-pointing-at-rooks problem.

It seems the game has become a bit sharper with these changes, but hopefully not too much.

Thank you very much for this. It works for me now.

I thought about your advice. I don't think the game is drawish as is, due to a big board with more possibilities compared to Chess, and quickpawns being comparatively easy to promote. I don't have any statistics to back this up, though.

But having more pieces realistically able to participate in an attack is fun, and I just changed the moves of the Kjempe and Custodian for this very reason.

Your suggestion for the Woodlander (Knight + vertical rook) would make it another 5+ value piece (actually a bit stronger according to the diagram's evaluation), which I think the players would often save for the endgame (which admittedly would be great fun), instead of coming to use in the midgame, when I think knight-y moves make the most sense on a large board. So I'm currently looking into some alternatives which would make the woodlander a more offense-oriented piece, but still keep it in the 4-value range where it is supposedly exchangable for a Bishop or an Avian: NsW, NvW, NfR ("lancer"), NfR3, etc. Another option on the table is to make the Woodlander promotable. This will take a while for me to playtest and come to some conclusions.