Comments by avunjahei

I have read the rules of all three games but never played them. I think Aronsons introduction of square fields to improve the attacking power of the Long Leaper is quite ingenious.

I also thought about some ways to handle the difficulties of attack in Ultima, but didnt try them out seriously. Maybe one experienced game inventor of this site can evaluate my idea better than I do. It goes like this:

Your army is subject to some kind of promotion. This promotion happens, when your king manages to advance to the opposite half of the board.

The power of chameleon, long leaper and pawns stay the same.

Your withdrawer gets the additional power of an advancer, promoting it to a pushme-pullyu.

Your immobiliser gets the additional power of a swapper.

Your coordinator gets the additional power of a triangulator.

Does that make sense?

Ha ha, a negative parallel universe Ultima! And now give to the white side the original Baroque pieces and to the black side the Euqorab ones. Must be a mind crushing mess.

Daniel is probably not the first to make a large board variant by just doubling the number of pieces. To have a whole cavalry of knights and to have bishops that can protect each other is a very interesting feature. I also like that he 1. didn t double the queen and 2. has the double step of the pawns retained in every position, though forgetting that twice caused me to lose the only game I played untill now.

For my taste there are, maybe, too many rooks on the board. I even would try out to boldly replace two of them with yet another pair of knights. Then the number of each sort of pieces on the board would reversely correspond to their value: 6 knights, 4 bishops, 2 rooks, 1 queen. Could be a stupid idea, though.

Years ago I had exactly the same idea, but when I tested it, I didn t like it at all. I guess, to design a game featuring a Royal knight, it needs more than just switching the roles of knight and king.

No well worked out starting array.

The opposing Camels can attack the Knights immediately, when they are developed on their most natural squares. Since the Camel is of minor value than the Knight (being a colourbound piece)this makes opening play rather awkward.
Superficially the corner squares seem to be a good place for the Camel in the opening. But let us consider to remove them to the b and i files. Opening play would be much less restricted now.

That also would have 2 further advantages. 

1. The Camel now would have 2 natural developing squares in the 3rd rank instead of only 1

2. One of them would be in competition with the most natural developing square of the Knight. So the player has to choose.

All that would cause opening play to be more variable.

And finally, involving the Knight in castling seams unnatural. Why not involving the Guard instead? He is more difficult to develop.

can a swapper, used as a bomb, capture more than one enemy piece?

Objectively there is too much power for such a - relatively - small board, but it is nice - though difficult - to play. The Unicorn is not easy to handle, but it is a very elegant piece.

The nonsense book of the week.

That chess ever was a dice game is wrong, let alone the other points

I played just one game and I think it's very good. It is a logical and well balanced combination of pieces and gameplay is interesting. Games do not have to be original. Games have do be designed for getting played, that's all.

There should be a rule: don't post games with undefended pawns in the starting array!

Inferior to Hadean Chess. The Flying pieces fit better into the game with more restricted movements. In this ensemble they kinda "swallow up" the rooks and bishops, turning them into inferior pieces, for the flying pieces can do everything what they can do as well.

The Camel attacks the opponent's Knight immediately when both are on their most natural developing square. I think this is a major flaw in games featuring both camels and Knights. Since Camels are worth less this hinders the development of the Knights. It would be better to have the Camels on b and i instead of c and h.

I played it again after long time and regret having given a bad rate to it. Formerly I didn't like that all games are attacks of both opponents on their right side while defending on their left side. Now trying it out again in fact I see no wrong with this predestined mutual races. Also the ensemble of pieces is well well chosen and work well together, like in all of Paulowitch's variants that I know. Although far inferior to FIDE chess it is a nice try.

The starting array is wrong. Betza's sample game has Archbishop and Nightrider changed their places compared to the starting array on the preset. Also, here you would have an unprotected pawn in front of the Archbishop, that can be threatened by the Nightrider on the first move. This cannot have been the intention of the inventor. He also clearly states that the "pieces are distributed to defend all the Pawns."