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Megachess. Played on 6 boards arranged in a 2 by 3 grid. (24x16, Cells: 384) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Never Commented, well at least in the system since 2003, Megachess determines how many pieces player moves uniquely. ''You can make as many moves on your turn as you have Kings.'' There are six Kings per side. Since Push-Pull by any piece can cause two to move, as many as 12 pieces may move on a turn. However, if having but one King later in the score, maximum is two, the piece moved and any (same-side only) it pushes or pulls.
Ratings and Comments for Mega-Chess has four 'excellent' ratings from 2001.
Joe Joyce wrote on Thu, May 22, 2008 07:27 PM UTC:Excellent idea to use the number of kings to determine the number of moves. It gives some structure to the game, helps speed it up and, I think, helps reduce draws. Is anyone aware of other games that use this idea of multiple kings with a move for each? I'd be interested to hear about any games played, and how they went. I suspect things could get confusing and rather overwhelming at times. The number of different pieces with their generally long ranges are difficult to juggle in a superlarge variant with multi-move turns. With 6 moves/turn, co-ordinated attacks would be common, as players tried to overwhelm local defenses for one or two kings. However, this can't occur until the pawns have sorted themselves out: if in the middle, probably by massacre, but I'd expect groups of pawns to open up 'doorways' for the sliders to advance to be a more common tactic. I'd think you'd have to massacre a fair number of pawns in this game to let the other pieces move at all. Six moves per player per turn eliminates calculating more than a couple turns ahead; the board changes too much after 12 moves [6 by each player] to make a serious effort to calculate past 1 turn difficult. You can see trends and make plans of a more or less general nature but that's about it. Finally, giving the knight a teleport ability compensates them for the beating they take in movement on the 16x24 board, and adds a little touch of 3D to the game.
And call the six Kings ''Kasparov,'' Karpov, Kramnik, Kamsky, Karjakin, and Korchnoi in memoriam of a great game owned now by Computer. Six-move, five moves, four moves of course are not so different in conception from Double Move, Progressive and their kin, working backwards.
This game looks very promising. An idea coming rather naturally into my mind by looking at the opening setup: This game calls for cylindrification! Cylindrical Megachess with 8 Kings ... --JKn
Flowerman's ''Win the battle, lose the war,'' http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=24998, sound like several earlier developments. This Megachess is like a battle inside a war, where each piece is a game. Also, Ramayana is like the outlier boards of Flowerman: http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/contest84/ramayanachess.html. Split-up boards are nothing new here and become like three-dimensional: http://www.chessvariants.org/large.dir/contest84/tandem84.html.
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