Fairy Chess

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HGMuller

Apr 23, 2023

#21

TheChessInfinity schreef:

plz compare it to mine

Well, your variant has 2x72 pieces, which makes it a lot larger than mine, which has only 2x56. (But I am currently working on a 2x80 piece variant on 16x16 using the same principles as I mentioned above.) Many of the pieces we use are the same, even though you appear to use less common names for those. (E.g. norrmally the Zebra is the (2,3) leaper, and a Giraffe a (1,4) leaper; what you call 'acquired' is usually called 'crowned'.) Your variant is designed in the tradition of the large Cazaux games (Zanzibar-XL, Gigachess, Terachess).

This leads to very long games: the Kings are burried behind 3 filled ranks, and against a serious opponent there will probably be no opportunity to even check it before the board population has dropped to some 2x20 pieces. That means some 2x50 pieces have to be traded first. The distance between the armies is very large (10 empty ranks). The leapers will need many moves to reach each other. E.g. a Camel can advance at most 3 ranks per move, so it will need 3 moves to enter the opponent's half.

So it can easily take 200 moves before there is any hope to check, let alone checkmate. The opening phase will be lengthy and uninteresting, as the first few moves will not depend much on the way you want to organize your army on the battle ground; they are just needed to transport the pieces to where you can start thinking about how to best involve them.

In my variant I try to avoid that by reducing the distance between the armies to 6 ranks, and allow the Pawns to advance to the mid-line in their initial move. Even in the 2x80-piece variant, where the armies are set up as 5 fully filled ranks. I also tried to put the leapers directly behind the Pawns as much as possible, so they need even fewer moves to reach the front line. The sliders can cross large distances in a single move, so the is little harm in starting those on the back rank.

This also makes the setup less vulnerable to Cannon attack. (And I did bury the Cannons deeply to prevent their early deployment.) In your variant the plan 1. Ec5 ... 2. Ee7 ... 3. a6 ... 4. Ca5 to quickly develop the Cannon cannot really be prevented, and by then moving that Cannon to a central file of its choice (g, i, j, or l) it would skewer some of the super-pieces. While the intrinsic value of the Cannon is less than a Bishop. It is not clear how black could defend against that; he would have to cure 4 serious weaknesses in only 5 moves.

So as a course qualification I would say my variant has a more carefully structured design, paying attention to several game aspects other that just amassing a large number of pieces on a large board.

Chesskhangbe

Sep 18, 2023

#22