A Game Courier Preset for Monkey King Chess

8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Fists
	a	b	c	d	e		q	r

Monkey King Chess

Uncoded. No rules enforced. No legal moves displayed.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Monkey King Chess and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

The Rules for Monkey King Chess

Red (White):

Pawns (P)

Monkey Kings (M)

Knight (N)

Lancers (L)

Heros (H)

Brave Whirling Monkey Fists (B)

Pilgrim (K)

Celestial (C)

Mountain (X)

Blue:

Pawns (p)

Sea Serpents (s)

Knight (n)

Goblin Generals (g)

Hero-Foes (h)

Lancers (l)

Goblin King (k)

Celestial (c)

Mountain (x)

I. The GameBoards

The main board (1-8, A-E) is the Earth board. Q,R-2 and Q,R-7 are clouds. There are also spaces to store Brave Whirling Monkey Fists tokens, but they are not properly part of the board.

The Red (Monkey King) player�s half of the Earth board is all the squares in ranks 1-4. The Blue (Goblin King) player�s half is the squares in ranks 5-8.

The squares on the Earth board colored red or blue are magic river squares. These squares give the chess pieces (in this game, called disks) special powers. The blue magic river squares correspond to Cloud Q, R-7. The red magic river squares correspond to cloud Q, R-2.

II. Flight: Movement To and From the Cloud Boards

No piece may make a capture when they fly to or from a cloud, including flight from one cloud to the other.

A piece starting movement on a Cloud square must note the color of the square first; it may fly to any empty square on the Earth board of the same color, or the other Cloud�s square of the same color if it is empty.

It is legal for pieces to move and capture within a cloud�s tiny two-square board. In practice, the limits of the pieces upon that two-square board mean that only the Goblin player�s Celestial can capture another piece on a cloud.

III. Object of the Game

IV. Flipping

Except for the disks that represent the Pilgrim and the Goblin King, all of the pieces are logically two-sided disks, with a different chess piece showing on either side. If you start a turn with a disk standing on any magic river square, you may flip the disk and simultaneously move it according to that new game piece's abilities. To put it another way, a disk standing on a magic river square has the ability to move as the disk on either side of its two faces. A disk may not flip if it is not on magic river square.

The Goblin King player cannot flip a disk if the Goblin King disk is not on Earth board (thus before initial placement, or after its capture, means the Goblin King player cannot flip disks).

The Monkey King player cannot flip disks unless he/she has initially placed the Pilgrim disk on the board.

V. Introducing disks

The game starts with the boards empty. Starting with the Goblin King player, each player takes turn either introducing a disk on their half of the Earth board, or moving a disk they previously had placed. Players may not introduce disks in this manner on any Cloud square.

The disks have a front and a back. Players may only place disks with the front side showing. The back side of the disks cannot appear unless the piece stands on a magic river square and flips it.

VI. The Pieces on the Disks

The two sides' pieces start the game roughly, but not exactly symmetrical. For the most part, even when identical on the front side, Red and Blue disks flip for different transformations.

There are twelve types of disks in the game: Pawn, Sea Serpent, Monkey King, Knight, Lancers, Goblin General, Whirling Monkey Fists, Celestial (a different type on each side), Goblin King, Buddhist Pilgrim.

All pieces that can capture move as they capture except the Sea Serpent. The Pilgrim and the Red Celestial cannot capture. Brave Whirling Monkey Fists is an off-board �counter�, not a normal type of chess piece.

Red (the Monkey King player)

6 Monkey Pawns: orthodox pawns with no initial double jump. These flip as Monkey Kings, which move/capture one diagonally (Ferz) and have cloud-flying ability. They also may receive additional turns from the Brave Whirling Monkey Fists tokens.

2 Monkey Knights: orthodox knights. These flip as Phoenix Lancers: like the Shogi Lance + flying ability. They slide as rooks in one direction only-toward the opposite end of the board. If on a cloud on their side of the board, they may fly in the same fixed direction to the opposite cloud (again, only if the landing square is empty).

2 Heroes capture as they move, one diagonally or one orthogonally forward, exactly as Sittuyin's Elephants. These flip to become Brave Whirling Monkey Fists, which are not board pieces but off-board tokens. The Red (Monkey King) player can spend these tokens, at any point during a Red turn, to give any Monkey King disk an immediate additional move.

These can be used separately; after a regular move, the Red player could spend the two tokens to move one Monkey King disk and then a different Monkey King disk (each move could be a non-capture, a capture or a cloud maneuver). Or, these can be used cumulatively; the Red player could use the regular turn plus two tokens to give one Monkey King disk a total of three moves (which could be zero to three captures and/or cloud maneuvers).

Once spent on an extra move, the players remove the Brave Whirling Monkey Fists disk from the game.

1 Buddhist Pilgrim: A "royal", whose capture brings Goblin victory, the Pilgrim moves one square in any direction like an orthodox chess king, but cannot capture any piece.

1 Red Celestial (more specifically, the Bodhisattva): She moves as a Rook (with cloud-flying ability) and is a variant of the now classic Immobilizer piece. (Ben Abbott invented the original Immobilizer for his game Ultima.) Any enemy piece that can trace an empty line of orthogonal squares (a clear rook path) to the Red Celestial cannot move. Thus the Bodhisattva does not capture, but as a "rook-ish immobilizer", may immobilize up to four enemy pieces near or far. The Red Celestial flips to become the Red Mountain. Imperial decree of the Emperor of Heaven states that any piece that captures a Celestial piece shall be immediately punished. The punishment is: burial under a mountain. First, make the capture as usual. Second, remove the capturing piece from the game; it is itself captured. Third, flip the captured Celestial to show its mountain side, and place that Mountain in the square from which the capturing piece attacked.

Blue (the Goblin King player)

6 Goblin Pawns: like Monkey Pawns, these orthodox pawns with no initial double-jump. These flip to become Sea Serpents, which move differently then they capture: they still capture as pawns, but move without capture by an orthodox knight-jump.

2 Goblin Knights: orthodox knights. These flip as Goblin Generals, the close Blue equivalent of the Monkey King. They move and capture one diagonally (like the classic Ferz) and may fly.

2 Goblin Hero-Foes (Lord Bear and Lord Tiger). These are exactly the same as the Red Heroes, based on Sittuyin Elephants (move/capture diagonally or one orthogonally forward). These flip to become Goblin Lancers - which are exactly the same as the Red Lancers - they slide orthogonally forward only, and may fly.

1 Goblin King. He moves/captures one in any direction, like an orthodox king. While he is not royal (capturing him does not win the game), the Goblin player requires his presence on the Earth board to give his pieces flip ability. Until the Goblin player places him in the game, no Goblin piece may flip; if the Monkey King player captures the Goblin King, the Goblin disks are frozen in their current flipped state.

1 Blue Celestial (Erh-Lang). He moves and captures as an orthodox chess Rook. He flips as the Blue Mountain. As with the Red Celestial, capture of the Celestial General is problematic. First, make the capture as usual. Second, remove the capturing piece from the game; it is itself captured. Third, flip the captured Celestial to show its mountain side, and place that Mountain in the square from which the capturing piece attacked.

No piece may attack or occupy a square with a Mountain. If the Red Mountain cannot move or attack, but if it stands on a magic river square, it may flip according to flipping rules

How to Move Pieces

Full Algebraic Notation

Algebraic notation identifies each space by a coordinate that begins with its file label and ends with its rank label. On the Chess board, files go up and down from one player to the other, and ranks go from left to right. In most games, files are represented by letters, and ranks are represented by numbers, but there is no fixed rule requiring this for all games, and some games, such as Shogi, reverse this convention. If you look at the diagram, you will usually see the file labels going from left to right and the file labels going up and down. And if you hover your mouse over a space, you will normally see the name of the coordinate appear in a tooltip.

It is not uncommon to see algebraic notation being used for Chess, but it is often in an abbreviated format that requires you to know both the rules of the game and the current position to know exactly which piece moves where. For example, the notation "Ne6" indicates that a Knight is moving to e6, but it doesn't indicate which Knight, and it doesn't specify where the Knight is coming from. To figure this out, you need to know how a Knight moves and which Knight on the board can make a legal move to e6.

Although rules may be programmed for individual games, Game Courier itself does not know the rules of any game, and it is unable to parse abbreviated algebraic notation. Therefore, it relies on full algebraic notation, which completely specifies the move without requiring any knowledge of the game's rules or the current position. The most usual type of full algebraic notation indicates the piece that is moving by its label, the space it is moving from, and the space it moving to. In Chess, a typical first move might be written as "P e2-e4". When you hover your mouse over a piece, you will normally see the piece label followed by the coordinate for the space, and when you hover it over an empty space, you will normally see the coordinate label. Including the piece label in your notation allows Game Courier to check that the piece you're moving is the right one, and it makes game notation easier to follow, but it is not mandatory.

You may promote a piece by including a promotion move after your regular move. A promotion move has a piece go directly to a coordinate. Here is an example: "p e7-e8; q-e8".

You may remove a piece from a space by adding an @ to the space or by omitting the destination coordinate. For example, both "@-e4" and "e4-" would remove the piece on "e4". This is useful for en passant when you are playing a game that does not handle this automatically. For example, "P d5-e6; e5-" removes the Pawn on e5 after a Pawn moves from d5 to e6.

You will not need to remove spaces for most games, but if you should need to, you can do this by omitting the first coordinate in a move. For example, "-e4" would remove e4 from the board. To add or return a space to the board, you may add an @ or any other piece to it.

Available Pieces

Pieces are represented by labels, usually using uppercase letters for White and lowercase letter for Black. When you enter a move or specify the starting position for a game, you should remember that piece labels are case-sensitive. Many piece sets are available for use with Game Courier, and this table shows you which pieces belong to the piece set you are currently using.

The inclusion of a piece does not indicate that it is used in the game you are playing. But if your game uses pieces not included here, you should choose a different piece set.

Credits

This preset uses the 1 settings file for Monkey King Chess, which was made by Vitya Makov.

Game Courier was created, programmed and written by Fergus Duniho.

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017