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Viking Chess. Armies start side-by-side on a 12 x 7 board. (12x7, Cells: 84) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
J. Hansen wrote on Wed, Oct 2, 2002 01:20 PM UTC:Good ★★★★Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Mar 30, 2003 10:06 AM UTC:Good ★★★★It is an interesting twist, but it seems odd that Rooks can be brought into action so quickly. Why is this array preferable to having them on b2, e2, h2, and k2?
What I like most about this variant, and what other people seem to like about it as well, is that it has a very fast but balanced opening. Action starts right away. When I tried to hide away the rooks what happened was that queens came into the game a lot faster and it was a lot harder to stop that from happening. As it stands now there are three goals at the start of the game. Set up a defence/offence that helps your pawns to get through, take out your opponents pawns while still protecting your own, destroy your opponents defence/offence. The rooks make a very big difference on this board. I would say that the difference between rooks and bishops are greater here then in ordinary chess and pawns are definatly worth more. What pros do you see in pulling the rooks back? Regards Tomas Forsman
Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Jul 20, 2003 10:04 AM UTC:Good ★★★★Partly keeping close to standard Chess, partly the trivial reason of symmetry within as well as between armies. In retrospect the latter is fairly trivial as the initial f1xg2 and g1xf2 could not be replicated except by wraparound. My question was out of curiosiy rather than criticism, and if moving further from standard Chess improves the game, well done. By the way, the game really fits its name. It conveys well the idea of warriors heading off into frozen northern wastes, as much competing to best fight the common enemy of the elements as fighting each other. Many games fit their names less well.
Anonymous wrote on Mon, Jul 21, 2003 10:25 PM UTC:Thanx for that comment. I tried to place the Rooks somewhere else but when
I pull them back it gets a lot easier to make a run with the pawns and
then white has a great advantage for opening and in my games get the first
queen about <b>65%</b> of the times and that makes a great
difference. With the Rooks up front white gets the first Queen just above
<b>50%</b> of the times and more often then not has to
sacrifice something to get it.<br><br>
Now I'm not the best chessplayer in the world so perhaps there are
strategies that would make these numbers a lot different but I haven't
found them atleast =)<br><br>
I didn't take your question as critisism by the way, just became curious
if I had missed some advantage with having the Rooks more back.<br><br>
With regards<br><br>
Tomas Forsman
It isn't easy to come up with an interesting variant when you limit yourself to the usual pieces, and Viking Chess passes that test with flying colors. I was surprised it didn't make it to the final in the 84-square Contest, although it was certainly in the strongest bracket. Would you mind if I made a preset for it on the Game Courier?
Antoine, thanks for your comment =) I answered in mail. Regards -=T=-
This variant is berserkly sharp, as befitting of the name, and a stronger player could easily suffer an upset loss if he is at all having an off day. The rectangular, rather than square, board cannot be helped, but it is clearly justified.
My tentative estimates for the piece values of this variant would be: P=1; B=3; N=3.5; R=5.5; Q=9.5 and the fighting value of K=3 approximately (though naturally it cannot be traded).
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