Topic: Chess Variants

I'm ready to start work on the HTML coding for my large variant but I'm being stymied by the lack of a decent name. What do I call this variant? "Jeff's Obvious Ripoff of Gothic Omega Tamerlane 100" seems a tad long. Kings & Things would be a great name, if Thom Wham hadn't already used it. Drat him! I suppose there are other naming schemes besides acknowledging the three games I am, ahem, paying homage to. I could somehow mention the importance of the Court pieces (Queen, Minister, Archbishop, and Prince) with something like King's Court 100 or Court Chess 100. A quick search reveals that King's Court is in use but Court Chess is not. Of course, Court Chess 100 is a rather bland name. Maybe I should call it Better Late Than Never 100, to signify that I envisioned the earliest version of this variant as a possible entry into the 100 Squares Contest. That makes this variant about four years late.

Topic: Chess Variants
Hey! My article on Knight Chase is up over at the Chess Variant Pages! Very nice. (Except for the grammatical error in my text that I just now noticed. Grumble, grumble.) I feel a tad bit more motivated to finish up my large variant project. The rules as they exist in my head are pretty much finalized. I just need to write up the damn thing.

Topic: Chess Variants
Been thinking about my large variant project. I've been unsatisified with the fact that the wizards are pawnless. Every other piece in the game has a pawn of ... that can promote to a new piece of that type. (Excepting that the pawn of kings promotes to the prince piece and not a second king). The wizards have no apprentices. I could add pawns of wizards onto the board, but that would probably mean putting them in advance of the normal pawn line or some other inelegant arrangement. Instead, it occurred to me that I could borrow Enochian chess's priveledged pawn rule, whereby the last pawn a player has is allowed to promote to any piece save king. Although this rule would not lead to many games with a third wizard on the board, it at least introduces the possibility.

I've also been thinking about some new piece ideas. The wizard (camel + ferz) and the champion (alifant + dabbabah + wazir) hint at the existence of a whole class of double and triple compound pieces comprised in whole or part of ancient chessmen. Off the top of my head, a knight + wazir would be a nifty piece, I'm not sure what to call it right now.

Another piece I came up with recently is the lighthouse, which captures as a cannon but moves in a much more limited fashion, either as a king or a wazir or a ferz. I'm not sure if the limited 1-step movement should also allow for capturing or not. I call the piece a lighthouse because it's movement is very limited but it can "see" pieces far away.