My take: Just add time and different scenery.
Some pieces couldn’t move at night. Some could only move on grass land, some other only within woods or rocky mountains. And then there is a catapult where you can shoot pieces randomly back on the board.The Landlord: any square it touches becomes blocked and can no longer be used in the match. It can start from any square and then move to any square adjacent to any square in it’s domain.
it starts out only being able to move every x turns, but as it gains squares, it speeds up
Exponentially!
“No, you’re doing it wrong”
The toilet’s always leaking, but it’s because you’re not flushing correctly.
Does it get in the way and slow things down, or does it offer protection to allies while they batttle the opposition?
No but it can sacrifice 4 pawns to replace the king
Isn’t that just the duck mode on chess.com?
Yup.
Which is fun but it needs more player.
As written the bureaucrat would be useful in preventing stalemate, which isn’t accurate since bureaucrats cause stalemates.
The Oligarch
While still standing, can force any non-pawn, non-oligarch piece on the opposite side to preform one move on their choice per turn.
The Landlord
Can claim any spot on the board as their own displacing the existing piece there and forcing it to move. If the piece has no viable move, they are just culled.
Both of these are waaaaaay to strong. Landlord just “culls” the Queen first turn. Or why not just the king?
Oligarch may also may just end in repeated moves. White uses oligarch to move black piece to bad position. Black moves same piece to good position again. One round wasted without any change to board.
Also, chess is based on the premise that you have to move a piece every turn and if you can’t, the game is a draw. Both of your pieces work by not moving.
Maybe it starts out on e4 and the current player can decide to either move one of their pieces or the singular beaurocrat.
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A Freaky Friday piece that can swap with a non-king piece of the same color still on the board, as long as neither can be captured or can take another piece before or immediately following the swap. Moves and captures like a king.
Interesting… This would be a great way to train newbies to look for weak points.
Yeah, I also thinks it helps as a training piece because it forces players to think past the next move. There’s virtually no move of opportunity that you can make with it. If you’re going to use it all, you need to think a minimum of two moves ahead.
I think the “neither can take another piece following the swap” is to restrictive. After the swap it is not your turn anymore anyway and it would basically make it impossible to swap with a queen or rook/bishop. They can capture something for most parts of the game. Just usually a protected piece.
Can it be captured?
Yes, but the capturing piece is out of use for 5 turns whilst the terms of capture are fleshed out
Yes, the usage would be to block pieces in a way that won’t get it caught.
The spy. It takes the form of one of your pawns but only you know which pawn is the spy.
If the spy kills a piece the way a regular pawn does, it ceases being a spy and reverts to bring a regular pawn.
If you position the spy on one side of an enemy piece with another of your pawns on the other side of it, you can recruit the piece as a pawn on your side (regardless of what class it was)
Kings and Queens are immune to spies.
When a spy is killed, any pieces it recruited are reverted to enemy pawns.
A similar variation is hidden queens
If we are modding chess.
Make board 10x10 add two pawns, and add a prince and princess.
Cross between king/knight/pawn and queen/pawn.
Prince moves like knight but only into an unoccupied square, takes like a king, but only moves forward like a pawn, can move back one square when taking.
Princess moves like a queen but only forward, like a pawn.
Princess moves like a queen but only forward, likes pawn.
So…forward or diagonal but not sideways or backward? Interesting, does she take a crown at the end?
I think side ways is OK. No backwards.
Haven’t thought it through too much, promotion would have to be play tested.
I like this idea, think if we can already have the king switch with the rook, maybe a similar mechanic with the princess sort of summoning the queen to blast everyone or vice versa
Has anyone ever made something like a uh, sort of stamina/mana system for chess?
Like what I mean is, both players start with say 10 move/logistics points.
Different pieces cost different amounts of move/logistics points to move, and then uh, your move point pool replenishes by some amount on your next turn, maybe by some calculation of getting back more points the less units you have on the board.
You could also make that more nuts by allowing multiple units to be move in one player turn, with some kind of climbing cost penalty for each move after the first.
So you could blitz, but then basically be stunlocked for your next turn.
this feels pretty similar to what you’re describing https://youtu.be/y7VtSK23_Jg
Edit: for those who don’t want to click youtube, the person designs a chess board to play real-time chess. each piece has a movement cooldown enforced by the board which uses magnets to restrict you from moving pieces while they are on cooldown.
Well thats fucking neat on an engineering level alone, damn!
Why a stamina pool? Why not individual unit stamina? If a 6/6-stamina bishop flies 6 tiles across the board in a single turn, then it can’t move until the next turn; it gradually regains its own energy by +2 spaces/turn, back up to 6.
You could certainly do that digitally no prob, but for an actual tabletop game… i dunno, feels too sacreligious to me to just straight up turn chess into a tactics combat game, lol.
I like the idea of a simple rule set that is easy enough to keep track of, but also allows a wide variety of possible strategies within it.
I think keeping the … stamina pool or whatever, shared and common to the player, well it simplifies an ongoing irl game’s tabulation as compared to keeping track of all units, and its also more like…
You are the commander, and you are managing the logistics of a whole army.
This is why I couldn’t settle on the terminology… maybe ‘command points’ would be a better way to phrase it.
Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense! And yeah, I was thinking that would make it closer to a computer game…
A Checker one, can only capture by jumping straight over another piece, yours included, cannot move otherwise.
Why prevent it from moving without capturing? Why not just have exact checker rules, king-ing and all?
The sniper.
- It moves like a king.
- It replaces one of the pawns on the board.
- If in any direction it has no more than one allied piece directly in front of it (cover), then at least (two? three?) unoccupied spaces between that ally and an enemy piece, it can take aim at an enemy piece.
- The next turn, if those conditions are still true, it can fire, capturing the target piece.
- An enemy piece adjacent to the target piece that could move into the line of fire can be sacrificed to take the bullet instead, though.
Intriguing, but does it have to have a meat shield?
It could probably either have to have a meat shield or have to take one turn to aim before firing but not both
