A Game Courier Preset for Test12x12-01

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Test12x12-01

Rules enforced. Legal moves displayed.

Welcome to Game Courier, where you can play Test12x12-01 and many other Chess variants through online correspondence.

Apart from the differences mentioned below, Jean-Louis Cazaux's game of XXXX is played like Chess:

Setting Up the Game

At the beginning Pawns, Maasai and all pieces which come as pairs (Elephants, Cannons, Rooks, Camels, Knights, Giraffes, Bishops, Crocodiles, Princes, Machines) are placed on the board as follows for each player:

• 1st row: Cannon / Camel / Giraffe / Crocodile / . / . / . / . / Crocodile / Giraffe / Camel / Cannon
• 2nd row: Elephant / Rook / Knight / Bishop / . / . / . / . / Bishop / Knight / Rook / Elephant
• 3rd row: 4 x Maasai / Prince / Machine / Machine / Prince / 4 x Maasai
• 4th row: 12 x Pawns

Then, Black freely decides where to place his King on one central square of the first or second row, f12, g12, f11 or g11, then his 7 "single" pieces, Queen - Eagle - Lion - Rhinoceros - Buffalo - Duchess - Sorceress on the remaining free 7 squares on the center of the board (e11, f11, g11, h11, e12, f12, g12, h12) in whichever order.

Then, White put his pieces symmetrically in mirror (if Black King is on f11, White King goes on f2) and makes the first move.

Game Courier handles this by moving each White piece as Black moves each of his pieces from the center of the board. To avoid GC bugging, it is advised to place the King first.

After this is done, White gets to make the first move.

Pieces

The Knight, Bishop, Rook, and Queen move as they do in Chess.

The Pawn moves the same as in Chess, including en passant capture. When it reaches the last rank, it may promote to a Queen, Duchess, Sorceress, Lion, Eagle, Rhinoceros or Buffalo.

The Maasai moves as super-Pawn. It captures 1-square diagonally forward like a Pawn, but moves with no capture either 1-square forward or sideways (left or right). It can also step two empty squares forward from any position on the board. Otherwise, it is identical to the Pawn (same promotion, en-passant capture rules).

The King moves as in Chess, except that there is no castling, and the King gets another special move instead. On its first move, the King may leap to any empty space in its second perimeter. These are the spaces two spaces away, including any space a Knight could reach. It may move over other pieces, but it may not use this move to escape check, and there must be an intervening space that is free from check. In the case of a Knight leap, there are two alternate intervening spaces, and the move is illegal only if the King would be in check on both of them.

The Cannon moves as it does in Xiang Qi. It moves as a Rook except that it must hop over an intervening piece to make a capture. It captures the pieces whose space it moves to, not the piece it hops over.

The Crocodile is the diagonal counterpart of the Cannon. It moves as a Bishop except that it must hop over an intervening piece to make a capture. It captures the pieces whose space it moves to, not the piece it hops over. It is also as Vao by problemists.

The Camel, a traditional piece from historic variants, is a (3,1) leaper. Since this space is always the same color, it is a color-bound piece.

The Giraffe, is found in Alfonso X's Grant Acedrex (but its move has been rendered differently by 20th century historians). It is a (3,2) leaper also known under the name of Zebra.

The Buffalo combines the leaps of the Knight (2,1), the Camel (3,1) and the Giraffe (3,2).

The Elephant can leap one or two spaces diagonally (Fers+Alfil)

The War Machine can leap one or two spaces orthogonally (Wazir+Dabbaba)

The Eagle moves as the fairy piece commonly known as the Griffon. It is a bent rider. It may move one space diagonally, or it may start in that direction, then continue its move in an ortogonally outward direction, moving from there as a Rook.

The Rhinoceros (or Unicorn) is a bent rider. It may move one space orthogonally, or it may start in that direction, then continue its move in an diagonally outward direction, moving from there as a Bishop.

The Lion may leap to any space one or two spaces away, including those that a Knight may leap to.

The Sorceress moves like a Queen and needs an intermediate piece between itself and its victim to capture it. The Sorceress jumps the intermediate and takes the victim on its square. The intermediate is left unaffected. Like the Queen is Bishop + Rook, the Sorceress is Cannon + Crocodile.

The Duchess moves as a limited Queen, one, two or three squares in any straight directions. When moving two or three squares, it may jump and it does not matter what any intermediate squares contain.

The Prince is a promotable Pawn-like piece with greater powers of movement. It moves like a King. On reaching the last rank, it may promote to a Queen, Duchess, Sorceress, Lion, Eagle, Rhinoceros or Buffalo.

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 Default-v4 settings file for Test12x12-01, which was made by Jean-Louis Cazaux.

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

Game Courier, Copyright © Fergus Duniho, 2001-2017