Comments/Ratings for a Single Item
💡📝Greg Strong wrote on Thu, Mar 1, 2007 06:44 PM EST:David, I completely 100% agree that the corner squares would normally change the endgames and that this is bad. That does not happen in this game, however, because of the disappearing square rule. Once a piece has moved off one of the extra squares, that square may never be entered again. So they should have no effect on an endgame at all - an endgame is on a standard 8x8 board. In fact, most of the game is on a normal 8x8 board. I like this solution better than the Gustav III solution because piece values are not affected at all and should be identical to their values on an 8x8 board.
Another game which uses diagonal corner squares on a 9x8(!) board is Bolyar Chess (a traditional Bulgarian variant). Here the player gets a special bonus if he promotes a boat on the extraneous corner squares. The boat is then promoted to General (=queen).
An important aspect of the gustavian board is that the extra corner squares provide shelter for the king. This means that it's less dangerous to initiate a pawn storm on the king side. As it's easier to get the king out of the way, this improves mobility of the heavy pieces that can be placed on the knight- and rook files to bolster the flank attack. This strategical aspect, which benefits fighting chess, is a bonus of the gustavian board. Leaping pieces, especially those with long-leaping camel moves, benefit greatly from the extra corner squares, while the sliding pieces have no use for them, except the queen, which is somewhat benefitted. The reason for this is that the leaping pieces can use the extra corner squares when maneuvering./Mats
Looks like a good game. However, I would probably like it better if : * Bishop are replaced by FADs or Omega Wizards (in the corner squares,) * Lions are replaced by Elephants (Ferz+Alfil,) and * Gryphon is replaced by Elephant+Scout. What do you think ?
Abdul-Rahman's musings about alternate pieces got me to thinking about how one might play up themes in this game...
Okay, so a theme of this variant is that three of the pieces are colorchanging (knight, gryphon and scout). Here's one way for an all Color-changing variant of Hubbub: Replace the rooks with genschers from Knappen's Seenschach (compound of panda/sliprook + knight). Replace the bishops with compound of multipath-giraffe + regular knight; replace the lions with compound of multipath zebra + regular knight.
There you have it: All Color-Changing Hubbub!
[Added Note: Oh and make the king a wazir, make the pawns chinese pawns with no initial double step. There, every single piece and pawn is colorchanging.]
[Optionally, replace lion with Harvestman from Seenschach or one lion with multipath zebra + regular knight and the other lion with a harvestman.]
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Interesting use of 'color alternating' pieces here. On an empty board, the nonleaping Dwar moves to the same 16 squares as the Gryphon. In Jetan, the Dwar makes exactly three Wazir-moves.
Greg, I really hate the way a lone King can hide from a Rook in those 'Omega Chess corners'. Why not stretch Gustav III's Chess to a 10x10 board with missing squares from x1-x8 and z1-z8, in your notation. As I commented on the Gustav III Game Courier Preset: all the usual forced mates seem to work there - also a King and two Cannons can mate a lone king - which can only happen after a terrible blunder on a rectangular board. [EDIT] Greg points out that I missed the disappearing extra squares rule in this variant. Added my rating.