xkcd #3139: Chess Variant

Comments

• captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s an aspect to Star Trek’s 3D chess, you can move the smaller platforms around in lieu of moving one of your pieces. I have no idea if it adds or subtracts from the game.

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  • ozymandias@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    damn, i played a real one where the platforms didn’t move… they just kinda extended the board

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• Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If I were to make up the rules:

  • Black gets to select at the start, which of the 8 empty tiles of the board should be voided.
  • Pieces can move and capture across, but can’t land in the void. It is an invalid move when considering checkmate/evading check.
  • Black or White can choose to move an adjacent tile into the void regardless of what pieces are on it. This uses their move.
  • The tile can be moved to get out of check or avoid checkmate or stalemate.
  • You cannot put yourself or both players in check with the tile move.
  • The tile cannot be moved if you are in check and moving the tile doesn’t get you out.
  • The space between where a king starts and ends when sitting upon a sliding tile does not count as a vulnerable space, unlike the normal rules for castling.
  • The king can castle under otherwise normal rules, if it and the target rook are in the original position even if the tile that they sit on had moved away then back, so long as those pieces were never moved normally. (To prevent the king being forcibly moved by the opponent solely to deny castling opportunity)
  • Moving a tile causing one’s own pawn to bypass an opponent pawn’s attacking space (anywhere on the board) only triggers the en passant rule if there is a valid space where the opponent’s piece would capture. No en passant for moving backwards or moving your opponent’s pieces past yours.
  • Pawn Promotion doesn’t happen even if a pawn moves backwards to the player’s own end row.
  • It would be rare, but en passant could capture a newly promoted piece if someone had moved their pawn one row backward and their opponent used the tile move to try to bypass it.
  • Two promotions can happen in one tile move.
  • The opponent chooses the piece(s) to promote if you move their pawn(s) to your end row.
  • You cannot move the tile if a resulting opponent’s promotion(s) to queens and/or knights would cause a check on you, even if for whatever reason the opponent would not choose that promotion.
  • No prohibitions on causing stalemate through tile moves. Though it is more likely to cause a repetition draw due to the trapped player being able to simply reverse it.

  Did I forget to cover anything?

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  • Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I would say you can only move a tile if you have a piece on it as well.

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  • altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It 👏 needs 👏 more 👏 horsey 👏 shenanigans.

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    • Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The greatest minds of the Internet are assembling at !anarchychess@sopuli.xyz to create the best variant of this game.

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• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you like this idea, try Robo Rally as a fun party board game. Turns are simultaneous, actions happen automatically, boards have actions that are constantly changing.

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  • Feathercrown@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I played this once, it’s great, would recommend

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    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      At Dragon Con I saw a huge Robo Rally game being played on the auditorium floor with real little robots. I was disappointed though that the conveyor belts weren’t real.

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• Glifted@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This just makes me think of “5D chess with time travel”

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• xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So now that the black pawn has reached “the last rank”, does it get promoted?

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  • SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    no, because it hasn’t reached the 8th rank.

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    • xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      So even if it does not move, this pawn could get promoted by some future tile-slide… come to think of it, I guess two pawns could get promoted in the same turn via a tile-slide.

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• Rhaedas@fedia.io ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In some aspects this results in situations that the original Star Trek 3-D chess has with its movable platforms. The issue with chess variants is always how it adds while not unbalancing the game, and that's a difficult thing to test since chess by itself is complex even with its simple rules.

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• forrcaho@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This could be a real thing: at each turn, you can either make a standard chess move, or slide one of the board tiles … who wants to code it up?

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  • Nougat@fedia.io ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There would need to be two missing 2x2 board pieces for symmetry.

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    • Bubs@lemmy.zip ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Maybe instead of starting with a hole, one player gets to choose which 2x2 to remove? It would have to be early on to ensure there is always a few empty 2x2s to choose from.

      So maybe black chooses the 2x2 to remove and then white makes their first move. That way black gets a bit of an advantage since white moves first.

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    • missingno@fedia.io ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Chess is already asymmetric since white moves first, so it's not necessarily a problem for the starting position to also be asymmetric. Though I wonder which would be the best starting position for the empty square, on white's side or black's?

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  • missingno@fedia.io ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I bet someone will have a playable version up within less than 24 hours.

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