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Half Chess (32). On a 4 by 8 board without pawns. (4x8, Cells: 32) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, May 4, 2003 09:21 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Putting the Rooks at the back is a clever way of avoiding pieces starting en prise without Pawns. The effect of the narrow board on the Bishops is well exploited.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, May 11, 2003 09:34 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Further to my last comment, this has given me an idea for a further development of Chess without pawns. This would involve a 4fx12r board with 1st rank MQKM, 2nd rank RCCR, 3rd rank NBBN, where M represents a Marshal (Rook+Knight) and C a Cardinal (Bishop+Knight). This would have the usual problems of Carrera et al regarding standard sets, but could easily be played with cards following a rule of powers of 2. 1=King's square colour, 2=Knight, 4=Diagonal, 8=Orthogonal. This could extend to four players (because of four suits) on what I term a 'Fivequarters' board - two 4x12 boards intersecting in the middle, total squares 80. While the Bishops 3 squares apart could be mutually protected by the 'one foot in the grave' rule about not passing through a corner of only three squares, those 4 squares apart would have to be separated by neutrals (represented by Jokers) at the corners of the intersection, which anyone could capture. A further rule that captured pieces get replaced by pieces of the captor's suit not already on the board could bring in Aces. These would naturally move as Queen+Knight - exactly as in Cardmate!

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, May 25, 2003 06:48 AM UTC:

When I suggested 'A further rule that captured pieces get replaced...' I subconsciously assumed a jumping capture as in Draughts or Jumping Chess (under Large variants, but with Knights capturing as in my comment there). A much simpler way of bringing in Aces would be to allow promotion on reaching a different player's first rank from that last visited by the piece. The former would give a Shogi-like game, the latter something closer to standard Chess with an endgame of few pieces.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Jul 5, 2003 07:16 AM UTC:

Yet another use for the idea of not using Pawns would be in a 4x4x8
variant. The first rank could be RDDR QESQ QSEQ RDDR and the second GBBG
UNNU UNNU GBBG. B/N/Q/R are the pieces from 2d, U the Raumschach Unicorn,
G(Governor)=B+U, D(Duchess)=R+U, S(Empress)=Q+U, E(Emperor, checkmating
just one wins)=K+1 cell Triagonally. The concentration of power would
certainly help overcome the difficulty checkmating in 3d!
	Regarding my previous idea for 4 players using cards, on reflection a
simpler rule than '1=King's square colour' would be '1=King's side',
but symmetry means that it would make no difference to play.
	Note that I have already given this page two ratings of Excellent, and
three might be seen as swamping.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, Oct 4, 2003 06:34 AM UTC:

The games that I describe below are now shown on separate pages, as Pawnless versions of Tunnelchess (3d variants) and Fivequatters (multi player variants).