Friday, September 22, 2006

Chess. Not Chess.

Thom Lawrence and his friends found traditional chess a bit too limiting and frustrating, so they introduced five new rules to spice things up.
  1. Shuffling
  2. Kamikaze Kings
  3. Limited Pawn Moves
  4. Taking Your Own Pieces
  5. Stacked Castles
Now you might think that these are just variations on variants you are already familiar with (and maybe they are), but it's not quite that simple. For example Shuffling is not quite the same as FischerRandom:

...we chucked our pieces on the desk and then sorted them: the leftmost would be placed on the A-file, the rightmost on the H-file. Pretty random, although your Queen likes to roll a long way so usually ends up on the A- or H-file.

And, I'm not familiar with any precedent for Kamikaze Kings:

At any time, a player may attempt to flick his king into his opponent's. If it knocks the king over without harming any innocent minions, the game is stalemated. Otherwise the flicker loses.

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