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combinational Chess II

merge pieces for collective abilities
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I was thinking about coin shaped chess pieces for easy carry and can played on any drawn up surface, when the idea of stacking revealed itself.

How about a chess games where the pieces can combine for combinational powers? The king is excluded.

It's take a move to combine and one to separate. This in itself allows one's own pieces to move through each other.

While combined, the pieces have combined abilities. Some don't make a stronger piece, queen and pawn or bishop for example. A queen and knight on the other hand seems more powerful. Petty much anything is going to have a good knight. But of course, if taken, the combined pieces are lost. But you do have the other two queens.

Another ramification, if combinations aren't limited to one at any one time, is that all the pieces, except the king, can be folded into one ultimate piece. This piece could be moved spawning different pieces as it traverses the board. It takes moves though, your opponent might win in the meantime.

Though these rule changes are intriguing, the truth of it is, the game has to be played to see if it is any good.

What, no, two black bishops. That's sacrilegious.

wjt, Feb 13 2021

Wikipedia: Fairy Chess Pieces https://en.wikipedi...i/Fairy_chess_piece
Potential time-sponge, but interesting how the general idea (of alternate pieces) has been carved up. [zen_tom, Feb 15 2021]

[link]






       [+]
Voice, Feb 13 2021
  

       Could be interesting. My instinct is that your position would become steadily weaker as you merge pieces. Part of the skill of chess is ensuring that your pieces protect each other.

So, for example, I would gain quite an advantage if I could exchange my queen with your mega-queen. Swapping my one piece for a stack made up of several of yours.

However, as you say, play it & find out!
DrBob, Feb 13 2021
  

       + seems like a cool idea
xandram, Feb 13 2021
  

       Most off the major pieces would start by picking up one of the pawns in front of them, so as to drop off that pawn, soon afterwards, much nearer the back row, where it could queen.
pertinax, Feb 13 2021
  

       So, how does a combined-piece move ?
FlyingToaster, Feb 13 2021
  

       [+] Interesting. Try it and post a demo. This could be a thing.
doctorremulac3, Feb 13 2021
  

       + The pieces could also be shot glasses and any pieces full of drink would have limited movement, making it a drinking game.
4and20, Feb 13 2021
  

       Hopefully my subconscious will shelve this and if the time arises, I'll give it a go.
wjt, Feb 14 2021
  

       I was thinking about how combining 2 of the SAME piece might work, ie: 2 rooks. Perhaps it would allow 2 moves at once (maybe fixed in direction); able to "take" and then carry on. Pawns could be interesting, as the "take" is a different direction to the "move".
And the interesting twist: instead of "taking" your opponents piece, you can combine with it, if you want to (akin to stealing their weapons or something...). And if the opponent then "takes" this cross-combo-piece, you lose YOUR piece, but they REGAIN theirs.
neutrinos_shadow, Feb 14 2021
  

       I imagine chess piece abilities as skills of the piece rather than held weapons. Teaming up the same skill set doesn't really give an advantage. It would however, allow a piece through another.   

       Combining with an opponent sounds interesting. Keeping track of ownership might be problematic.   

       Today, I was informed of Shogi / Japanese Chess or Game of Generals. This is a chess-like game that allows you to use your opponent's taken pieces as your own and has promotion zones. More of a battle game than the distilled logic attempt of Chess.   

       And yes, combining the pieces would be moving away from that logic purity.
wjt, Feb 15 2021
  

       Created a video game that was kind of a chess variation back in the day. Ran on a flip phone, so aging myself there. It was fun to play and people liked it. Got good reviews and made a couple of bucks.   

       Big money in games. It's what the kids spend their time and money on these days. I've mentioned my nephew is in the biz and the stories about the amount of dough people would spend would blow your mind. Somebody in Saudi Arabia spent millions on some kind of coins or token things that he'd give to his friends. Assume he was royalty. Royally stupid anyway.   

       Anyway, make a prototype and put a demo on Kickstarter. Might make some bucks. Fun project anyway.
doctorremulac3, Feb 15 2021
  

       There's a nice description of a range of "fairy" chess pieces on wikipedia that includes Wazirs, Camels, Zebras, Phoenixes (Phoenices?), Drunk Elephants, Caliphs, Giraffes, Chancellors and Centurions among others. It's fascinating how much thought has gone into varying all the pieces - and there's even a special generalised notation for describing a given piece's movement abilities. A bit of a rabbit hole tbh, one variant I'd not come across before is "Chess on an Infinite Plane", where the board has no boundaries. In the Trappist variation of this, there exists a weird piece called the Huygens which is a rook that jumps a prime number of squares in any orthogonal direction.
zen_tom, Feb 15 2021
  

       Combining with pawns makes sense to be able to reshape the board as you transport them. A natural move might be to do pawn+rook to move the pawns forward and deposit them as roadblocks.
RayfordSteele, Feb 15 2021
  
      
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