h a l f b a k e r yThis ain't rocket surgery.
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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.
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]
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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! |
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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. |
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So, how does a combined-piece move ? |
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[+] Interesting. Try it and post a demo. This could be
a thing. |
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+ The pieces could also be shot glasses and any pieces full of drink would have limited movement, making it a drinking game. |
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Hopefully my subconscious will shelve this and if the time arises, I'll give it a go. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Combining with an opponent sounds interesting. Keeping track of ownership might be problematic. |
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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. |
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And yes, combining the pieces would be moving away from that logic purity. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Anyway, make a prototype and put a demo on Kickstarter.
Might make some bucks. Fun project anyway. |
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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. |
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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. |
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