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Archoniclastic Chess. Pieces are augmented on squares of their color. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Apr 1, 2002 12:40 AM UTC:

New comment system indeed.

JCL wrote on Sun, Mar 31, 2002 12:00 AM UTC:

Note that any CV whose rules are lost would serve as Thespis Chess. --JCL

gnohmon wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 08:00 PM UTC:

<HR>I really ought to sieze the publishing delay as an opportunity to rewrite and improve the text of Ghastly Chess, on the principle that a sick wind blows poorly. For Mikado, there is already List Chess, my 1977 name for 'many rule sets in one game'. One could also have Fan Chess, in which every piece carries a fan; instead of moving, the player can have one piece deploy its fan, which makes it immobile and ancapturable. It would take two turns to close the fan, and the first turn would leave the piece immobile but capturable. Stalemate loses, of course. The Mikado is all about teaching the chorus to use the fan a certain way. Any game with a Jester would serve for the Yeomen, and for the subtitled Iolanthe, any form of Fairy Chess does the trick. Trial by Jury, though, wrecks everything. Bummer. Would 'Chess and Verdi' work better? No, I thought not. Puccini gives us Mimi Chess, where the Q gradually becomes weaker and ultimately expires. So, there's hope. Basingstoke, indeed. -- gnohmon<HR>

JCL wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 07:00 PM UTC:

'would perhaps come close to being almost nearly playable' Almost . . .
Well, if instead of each rank and file being different, if the board were
divided into maybe three zones in each dimension (left, center, right;
back, center, forward; etc.), then this might be actually manageable by a
normal human. And on the other topic, once youopen the door to Gilbert and
Sullivan chess, logic dictates all sorts of generalizations (Aristophanes
chess, Tolstoi chess, Rowling chess, ad...ad...I dunno) --JCL

PBA wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 06:00 PM UTC:

'would perhaps come close to being almost nearly playable' Almost . . . Reading the last several comments as an editor, I can not help but to suggest I see an article here (OK, I could help it, but I won't). If we can have Chess and Physics (and we do), why not Chess and Gilbert and Sullivan? (Of course, Gnohmon could remark that I'm sitting on two his articles already, and why should he send anything else in until I publish them, which is fair enough, but editors have no shame). PBA

JCL wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 05:00 PM UTC:

As long as we are flogging this theme, how about Gondoliers Chess (two
Kings, and no one knows which is the real one), Buttercup Chess (exchange
King with random Pawn at start of game), Sorcerer Chess (each piece is
attracted to randomly chosen other piece), Lord High Executioner Chess
(must mate self before opponent, too drawish), Lysistrata Chess (Queen
refuses to perform, whoops, wrong playwright), and...and ('Basingstoke,
John') Aah yes, Basingstoke it is. --JCL

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 04:00 PM UTC:

<HR>In Basingstoke Chess, each turn after making a legal move a player may add one new rule (chosen from a pre-agreed list), or may say 'Basingstoke', which resets the rules to FIDE default. This would be sort of like Progressive Chess, but in a meta manner of progressing. <HR>

Anonymous wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 03:00 PM UTC:

<HR>What is the state of a bare king? Naked, of course. Ask me something more difficult. <HR>

JCL wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 02:00 PM UTC:

By the way, Race Chess is kind of like Rollerball Chess, which was an entry
into some contest or other, and is actually kind of neat. You realize that
the regular annual contests would be much more boring if Hans were born on
February 29?  (Yes, I know.  I pirated that idea.)  --JCL

JCL wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 01:00 PM UTC:

The very concept of Ruddigore Chess leads immediately to, 'What is the
state of a bare King?'  The mind boggles, at least my mind does.  --JCL

gnohmon wrote on Sat, Mar 30, 2002 12:00 PM UTC:

<HR>Too many new ideas here to reply to, so I'll addd some new spices to the pot instead. In Race Chess, both players have the same 'forward' direction. (No relation to _The Forward_, which is down on East Broadway by Canal Street.) In Ruddigore Chess, I suppose you must make one capture per N moves or else one of your own pieces succumbs to the curse. Of course, if a man can't capture his own pieces then whose pieces can he capture? For the final touch, make it a shogi/chessgi variant with drops (there's a gi in ruddigore, just backwards). Would 'Forward Chess' be the name of the feebback variant where more advanced pieces are stronger? (No relation to -- O, I said that.) Ruddigore: one capture per move or else; captured pieces become reserves; you can capture your own; if you fail to make a capture you must choose one of your own which perishes -- gone from the game, not in reserve. Notice that when you place a reserve it is not a capture, therefore some other piece perishes. Ruddigore Chess has not been playtested. Left-right increments combined with rank increments suggest a game where each piece can have 64 different possible movement patterns depending on which square it occupies. If these were extremely regular, and therefore the player had some chance of remembering, the game would perhaps come close to being almost nearly playable. Chatter is good.-- gnohmon<HR>

PBA wrote on Fri, Mar 29, 2002 08:00 PM UTC:

Oops, only added three squares to the Knight, maybe would a forward cH (capturing (0,3) leap) be too strong? PBA

PBA wrote on Fri, Mar 29, 2002 07:00 PM UTC:

John, I was going to reply to your, er, ah, proposal, but I find I can't think of anything appropriate to say . . . There seems to be Ruddigore in the air, since Ralph's submitted but as-yet-unpublished (I'm getting to it!) Chatter Chess also references it, not to mention the Ruthven (Negative Relay Knight) in 'Worse than Useless'. I wonder where I left my soundtrack CD? Balancing a Feebback and a non-Feebback army? One idea is to add all of th missing attacks from the back to the front: <ul> <li> Kings are missing three back attacks, so they can capture (but not move without capturing) straight-forward or diagonally-forward two squares. </li><li> Queens are missing three attack lines back, so they can capture (but not move without capturing) in the forward four directions as Rhinos (four instead of three as it is symmetrical and because of duplicated squares). </li><li> Rooks only have a single attack line missing, so they get to capture (but not move without capturing) as a Halfling Bishop on the forward diagonals. </li><li> Bishops lose two attack lines, so they get to capture (but not move without capturing) narrowly forward as Rhinos. </li><li> Knights need four attack squares replaced, and they should be color changing, so they get to capture but not move without capturing as a forward or sideways Wazir. </li></ul> Would that balance it? Another approach, but a very different game use a vertically cyclindrical board of 8x14, a line of Pawns on either side of the pieces, and have both armies consider forward the same direction. PBA

JCL wrote on Fri, Mar 29, 2002 06:00 PM UTC:

How about Syncretic CHess? Another way to think about Feebback Chess is to
enfeeble the pieces when they are toward the back of the board (i.e. closer
to their first rank). This could be done by laming or spaciousing
(whatever, this is a concept, not a finished product). BUT, the pieces
would regain their normal powers as they approached the far rank. AND, you
could lift an idea from M-Chess, and give them different augmentors
depending on what ranks they stand on, perhaps leftward augmentors on
righthand columns, etc. THEN, you could make it Archoniclastic, augmenting
pieces depending on what color square they stand on. AND THEN, you could
apply this to Peter Aronson's Chess with Cyclical Armies! AND AFTER THAT,
you could work on the hex version for three players!! ('Basingstoke, John')
Ahh, yes. Basingstoke it is. --JCL

gnohmon wrote on Fri, Mar 29, 2002 06:00 PM UTC:

<hr>I think your ideas for Feebback Chess are excellent. It is interesting to think how, when playing a non-Feebback army against a Feebback one, one could cause havoc by getting behind and backstabbing. However, for the Feebback army to be competitive, its forward powers would have to be heavily enhanced. -- gnohmon <hr>

PBA wrote on Fri, Mar 29, 2002 05:00 PM UTC:

Of the standard CDA Armies, the one that I suspect would gain the most from being augmented is the Colorbound Clobberers, since it has four colorbound pieces per side to benefit from being made colorfree (the opposite of colorbound, of course). Dragging the Feebback thread here so that poor David Short isn't left wondering just what this has to do with Spinal Tap Chess, I can see a number of forms Feebback Chess (but what JCL was talking about is Feeback Chess, another think entirely of course). First, we have the Feebback Chess where pieces move back weakly. One form of it is where pieces can not capture when moving backwards. This is interesting in its effects, since Kings and Queens lose 3/8 of their capturing power, Rooks 1/4, Bishops and Knights 1/2, and Pawns are not effected at all. I suspect that this would make promotions easier, since the back rank would have to be guarded from the back rank. Another form could have backward movements be Lame, so that all backward leaps are lame, and all backward steps and slide are spacious. I don't know if leap riders (Nightriders, Dabbabahriders, etc.) would be both lame and spacious. Both this and the previous variant could probably be applied to Different Armies. Another interpetation of 'Feebback' would be to move the Pawns to the 3rd and 6th ranks (no double-move or en-passant), the pieces to the 2nd and 7th ranks, and to fill the back ranks with Feebs. Feebs only move one square straight forward without capturing, may be captured by either side, may be captured by Pawns moving forward, and promote on the last rank to Knight, Bishop or Rook (or in CDA to the pieces that occupy the equivalent positions). There, I've taken this far too seriously, so I'd better go . . .

gnohmon wrote on Wed, Mar 27, 2002 05:00 PM UTC:

<HR>I had forgotten that the published Augmented Chess speaks only of augmenting the FIDE army. In principle, augmenting equivalent armies should give equivalent augmented armies; I have not looked for specific exceptions. I like the Crybaby, and of course the Crabinal has been kicking around for a while; and either can of course be augmented by Langskip. It may be that in Archoniclastic Chess colorbound pieces are at a disadvantage; but my thought was that by having the augmented version also be colorbound, the disadvantage is removed or at least reduced. Consider the Knight augmented to NW: half the time it is augmented, and half the time it is not. Its average is fifty percent, and the average of the Bishop augmented to BD is also 50% because one of them is never augmented and the other always is. The N/NW has the option of posting itself so that both pieces are augmented, but also has the disadvantage that both could be chased into unaugmented positions. Also, the weaker Bishop, the one that can never be augmented, has the advantage that it controls the squares on which the opponent's augmented pieces can be found -- a new type of levelling effect. Therefore it seemed to me that colorbound pieces in Archoniclastic Chess had a special interest that would make it more fun if they're in the game. -- gnohmon<HR>

PBA wrote on Wed, Mar 27, 2002 04:00 PM UTC:

This article is talking as if Augmented Chess was based on augmenting Different Armies, with its question of how do you augment a BD or a FAD, but the published version of Augmented Chess is based on augmenting the FIDE army. It seems to me that the only colorbound piece that needs to be augmented is the Bishop, which is an interesting issue still. The interesting thing about augmenting the Bishop in this variant is that while you can give a colorbound augmentation to it (producing, say, a BD), that only helps one of them -- the one on the opposite color will never be augmented. This might be OK, as it yields a weak piece, and weak pieces can be useful and interesting, since you can threaten trades (is an Archoniclastic NW/N worth more or less than a Bishop?). Alternatively, as Augmented Chess offers alternate Knights and Queens, alternate Bishops could be offered. What sort of alternate Bishops? You want Bishop replacements that: <ul> <li>Are not colorbound;</li> <li>Are worth almost the same as a Bishop;</li> <li>And feel something like a Bishop to play with.</li> </ul> That's a tall order. I have a couple of unscientific proposals: <blockquote> <h4>The Crybaby (WAA)</h4> Sort of a super-Waffle, the difference between A and AA is probably small enough to account for the difference between a Waffle and a Bishop, and it moves sort of Waffle-like. <h4>The Crabinal (ffNbsNhhB)</h4> It's bishop-like and not colorbound, but it is hard to augment, since of the original augmentors, only the W and the D work with it. </blockquote> An alternative approach would be to render Bishops not-colorbound by using Kristensen Bishops (mfbWB). But this makes Bishops clearly more powerful than Knights, which is very likely undesirable. Well, I've chattered on enough for now . . . PBA

gnohmon wrote on Wed, Mar 27, 2002 03:00 PM UTC:

<HR> On a 10x10 board, the forwardmost (1,3) jump is not so dangerous, as you suggest. The real problem with the 10x10 board is that I do all my analysis and playtesting blindfold, and the chessboard in my head is only 8x8. For this reason, I give only small amounts of attention to other board sizes. If you really want to do some heavy 10x10 work, run the numbers through my methods for estimating the whole-game mobility of Knigh and Rook and Rhino and so forth, then make some different armies! However, I did find one problem with Chess on a Really Big Board -- Pawns are funny. Pawns might be okay on 10x10, but I don't think I really answered the question of what Pawns should be on 16x16. Just a random grist for the mill.....-- gnohmon<HR>

PBA wrote on Tue, Mar 26, 2002 03:00 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

The world obviously needs more Augmented Chess variants! I wonder, though, if moving this to a 10x10 board where Camels/Long Knights (and maybe (3,3) leapers) are not out of place would allow a more natural selection of Augmenters. PBA

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