Single Comment

Tetrahedral Chess. Three dimensional variant with board in form of tetrahedron. (7x(), Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Mark Thompson wrote on Sat, Jun 21, 2003 11:24 AM UTC:

I've been thinking lately that the 84-cell tetrahedral board might adapt
better to a 3D Shogi. My reasoning is that Shogi pieces are less powerful
than Chess pieces, getting much of their value from being parachutable
once captured, and the difficulty of visualizing moves on this board might
be lessened for less powerful pieces. I'm considering replacing the Rooks
with Lances that can only move orthogonally 'forward', the Dabbabantes
with some kind of Silvers and Golds that can only move to a subset of the
adjacent cells, and having a Horse (a Knight, but only with its
forwardmost moves) that automatically drops into the King's starting
square whenever the King first vacates it. I don't think I'd include any
pieces like the Shogi Bishop or Rook. The board's colors could be reduced
to two. Pawns might move to the forward cells of the same color, or of
opposite color, or there might be two kinds of Pawn. A Silver and Gold
would move to any of the four forward cells, or to the adjacent lateral or
rear cells that are the opposite color (Silver) or the same color (Gold,
considering the same-levels cells 'diagonally' adjacent as adjacent for
this purpose).

It appeals to me that the board is also nearly the same size as a
conventional Shogi board. These armies would be a bit smaller, but I think
they're also a bit stronger.