Single Comment

Companion Chess[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

H. G. Muller wrote on Sun, Oct 12, 2014 09:33 PM UTC:

I intend to put a new Chess variant on Fairy-Max to highlight its new
feature that it now can perform checkmates that need to take place in a
specific corner (like Bishop + Knight). Before it always got stuck on those
in the wrong corner.

So I wanted a variant with many different 3-vs-1 checkmates. (In
ortho-Chess there are only two, B+B and B+N.) To this end, none of the
pieces will have mating potential on its own. And several pieces will be
color bound. To increase the variety, pieces on King and Queen side will in
general be different. (Only the corner piece will be the same, to allow
castling in both directions with the same piece.)

I am thinking of the following pieces:

RD7mW (the Queen replacement, Mats Winther's Adjutant, but with a
color-changing non-capture)

WN (Rook replacement, a color alternating 12-mover)

N, WA, AG, FA (all 8-movers, the latter two color bound)

K + P will be the normal FIDE pieces.

The 6 (non-royal, non-Pawn) piece types make 15 different pairs (plus 6
homogeneous pairs obtainable only through promotion, of which probably only
2x RD7mW would ever occur in practice). Of these 15 heterogeneous pairs,
only N + AG has no mating potential. For FA + AG they should be on unlike
colors, but they start that way. There will be 8 different pairs where one
of the pieces is color bound, so that the corners are not equivalent. The
mate with N + FA will resemble that of B + N a lot, and be possible only in
the color of the FA.

Comments and suggestions welcome!