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George Duke wrote on Wed, Oct 24, 2007 11:55 PM UTC:

Above Average 6.5 out of 10. The newer prolificists Joe Joyce and Gifford are relatively untested objectively. Here 11 piece-types on 121 are close to the norm roughly 10%(wide divergence sometimes makes a good game too, so this measure is mostly descriptive). Let us begin to place these new bodies of work(as done by looking at 10-15 Charles Gilman's 150 CVs mostly June 2007). Renaissance (1980) 120 squares, Vyremorn (developed 1987-1999) 132, and Jester(1999) 120 are three 'comparables' as a rough starting point, somewhat randomly chosen. PoM and those three all are characterized by being very large 105 to 132 squares(not extremely large: that would be 144-196) and somewhat complicated. There has to be a pretty compelling new mechanism to expect much following for a CV bigger than 85 or 90 squares and so rather complex. Most pieces here are just renamed longstanding variant fare. In PoM of the two actually novel pieces, the Medusa is only another name for 'Ultima/Rococo/Fugue'(PoM predates Fugue) Immobilizer restricted to one, two or three steps. Unique castling rule of trading places and extended Pawn two-step from Rank 3 are possibly unique features. The Sample Game and Problems enhance the product, but over-all somehow lack of imaginativeness compared to Vyremorn and Renaissance. The other two very large Chesses from the same period(excluding earlier Renaissance) have wider more original piece mixes. The other new piece is the Morph, superficially Rococo Chameleon-like. Since captures are not so common or controllable, Morph would remain a prosaic Bishop on the average the first maybe 10 or 20 moves before opportunity to Morph. Just Medusa as restricted maximum-three-stepper and Morph on 8x8, 8x10, 9x10 would make a Good game, but PoM stretched to 121 looks to be long drawn out. It has the usual disadvantage on >=100 of poor Knight(Horse) and Bishop(Adviser) being lost or foresaken by the more powerful long-rangers battling to pick off Pawns or bully those weaker pieces.

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Comments

Pillars of Medusa. A variation of Turkish Great Chess plus two additional pieces, the Morph and the Medusa. (11x11, Cells: 121)

George Duke wrote on Tue, Jan 13, 2009 07:51 PM UTC:

In context of the same year 1997, Ralph Betza has piece Medusa, or Gorgon, from 1997 at ''Chess Variants with Inverse Capture.''

💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Sun, Jan 11, 2009 08:50 PM UTC:

(zzo38) A. Black - Yes, a very good catch! You are 100% correct. I do not recall who played that game, but White thought he had checkmate, announced it, and Black missed the save that you found. I must admit that I did not notice the save either, but now that Medusa move can certainly be seen as the saving move. You are the first person I know to catch that! Many thanks.

(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Sun, Jan 11, 2009 08:36 PM UTC:

In the example game, can you move D11 to F9 to stop checkmate?

💡📝Gary Gifford wrote on Sun, Jan 11, 2009 02:44 PM UTC:

Mr. Smith. You stated, 'I meant that your Bishops are on the same colour.' Reply: I look at the rules setup and see 4 bishops (2 for each side) and on different colors. I look at this preset (http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php) and see the same setup. However, I found that another pre-set was setup wrong. So your Bishop criticism it seems, was to one of two pre-sets, not to the true setup as seen in the rules. I fixed the error.

Regarding your White advantage and asymmetry equalizing statements you also say,'I don't need examples.' Reply: But an example (if it existed and if it was not an exception to the rule) would clarify and tend to validate your statements.

In your most recent comment you give me credit for a little equation that I have nothing to do with and as I see it, has nothing much to do with the game. You go as far as to give another persons' different answer to the equation. An example of a game position would be relevant. Showing us a zero and a 1/2 tells us nothing about the game.

Yesterday you mentioned,'... and I didn't say that the Morph was powerful.' But it seems you did, indirectly. Because there are really only 2 new pieces in that game (the Morph and the Medusa) when compared with Turkish Great Chess. So, with simple logic we see:(a) your statement that new pieces are ridiculously powerful and (b)we understand that the Morph is one of two new pieces then (c) we conclude the Morph is ridiculously powerful.

On a final note from me this time around, you implied that perhaps you would not play the game against me using White pieces because I would have an advantage due to playing strength. So that brings us to another point... the point that playing strength actually influences the outcome of a game. I would go as far as saying that the stronger player will generally win at Pillars of Medusa, regardless of color... with the occasional exceptions due to an oversight, but not due to game mechanics.

John Smith wrote on Sun, Jan 11, 2009 06:07 AM UTC:

I meant that your Bishops are on the same colour. I don't need examples. What you're saying is that 1-1+1-1+1... != 0. (Then again, George Duke would probably say that it's 1/2! ;-D) For every Black favoring position, there exists a White favoring position.

Number of ratings: 3, Average rating: Excellent, Number of comments: 29

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