donkirkby / chess-kit Goto Github PK

A brief summary with diagrams for all the piece movements, for those who forgot the basics.

Shuffle cards and flip up 4 to form the river.
Add adrenaline to any cards you skip over.
Card colours?

Starting with an empty board, add one piece at a time, power allowed based on number of pieces on the board. Capture permanent? Probably not. Goal is a chain of captures through your own pieces connecting opposite sides. Opponents connect perpendicularly. Start with kings, and win by capturing king or connecting opposite sides? Place on a space that one of your pieces could capture? Only capture by adding pieces, or choose between moving and adding?

Same movement mechanic as #20 Neighbour Chess, but as a puzzle race game. Are Neighbour Chess and Chess Golf too similar to include both?

• Add rules.
• Add some examples.
• Generate interesting problems to solve.
• Simulate a bunch of games, and give quartile scores as targets for solitaire play.

Inspired by backgammon chouette, a group of players rotate in and out of a single game, betting on the outcome.

Maybe you could buy out the side that you think is going to win, and that lets you swap in. Some kind of auction mechanism, maybe with a tithe to the pot?

The rules would be improved by adding diagrams, so process the code blocks in a similar way to the Donimoes project. Python chess looks like a useful library for building diagrams, and even has a good-looking ASCII output format, although it might not be able to parse it.

Start with pawns in place, but all other pieces replaced by checkers. Players write the location of their pieces on a paper grid, hidden from opponent. Pieces can be placed wherever you like on your back row, or placed randomly, as in Chess 960.

Coins are cloaked pieces, that can always move like a queen up to two spaces. However, the king can only move like a king. Other pieces can partially uncloak by making a legal move for their piece. Knights automatically uncloak if they make a knight's move, and their coin is replaced by a knight. Bishop, queen, or rook add extra coins when they partially uncloak. A stack of 2 coins has moved diagonally, and a stack of 3 coins has moved orthogonally. If it's done both, it automatically uncloaks as the queen.

At the start of your turn, you may guess the identity of one of your opponent's cloaked pieces. If you guess correctly, you make two moves in the current turn. If you guess incorrectly, your turn is over.

At the end of your turn, you may replace any number of your checkers with their uncloaked chess pieces.

Randomized starting layouts, invented by Bobby Fischer.

Starting layouts can be generated by generator page, or you can use a deck of cards for spaces and pieces.

Castling rules use standard ending locations.

Use checkers to mark parallel board, with and without can't interact. If all 12 of your checkers are on the board, you must move a piece off a checker.

4 players on one board with a standard set. If Walter and Winnie play White against Betty and Bob, then the play order would be Walter, Betty, Winnie, Bob, and so on. The first two players play the side of the board to White's right, and their partners play the left half of the board, so it's possible to play the first two moves of the Ruy López opening. You can only move a piece that starts on your half of the board. Check could be mate if it happens on the right tempo. Maybe both players can move the king?

Two players cooperate to capture the most pieces in a game, limited by a deck of cards.

Standard setup, plus a deck of cards with one card for each piece. Deal 3 cards to each player.

On a turn, make a standard chess move, discard one of your cards onto your discard piles, then draw a card. If it's a capture, then the piece you move must be the same type of piece as your discard, and the piece you capture must be the same type of piece as the top of your opponent's discard pile. After a capture, remove the top card from your opponent's discard pile, and you then have the option to make more captures with the same type of piece.
Game ends with the capture of a king or the end of the deck. Number of captures are doubled by capturing a king.

• Add rules.
• Add diagram to show piles. (Probably don't include hands.)

Right now, adding a diagram to an early game renumbers all the later diagrams. If you used the second-level heading as a prefix, then you'd only have to renumber the diagrams within a single game.

Each player places a coin on their right side of the chess board, aligned with the rank farthest from them.

Captures that move a distance of 1 or a knight's move are completely normal, but ranged captures either reduce your range or increase your opponent's range by one less than the range you used..

For example, if a bishop captures A2xD5, that's a range of 3. The player can then choose whether to reduce their own range by 2 or increase their opponent's range by 2. Can't adjust below 1 or above 8, and must make the largest adjustment possible. Cannot put yourself in check by increasing the opponent's range.

Use as inspiration for a puzzle, or include as is?

The basic rules are that you are given a starting position of chess pieces in one colour, and then you have to capture all but one of them. Each move, a piece must capture another piece of its own colour.

No captures, try to get all the pieces into one connected group. You move using the move of one of your neighbours. Pieces without neighbours can't move.

Start by randomly generating a layout. Maybe a deck of red and black cards from 2 to 6, red shifts files and black shifts ranks. Another deck of red and black piece types, choosing which pieces to drop, excluding pawns. If you land on an occupied square, you may choose any empty square in the surrounding 8.

You decide when to stop. One point for every unused piece.

Diagonal connections count. Only get moves from neighbours of the same colour.

• Add rules.
• Add some examples.
• Generate interesting problems to solve.
• Simulate a bunch of games, and give quartile scores as targets.

Piece types in a rondel, maybe every other one is a pawn? Either play the current piece on the rondel, or place a coin on every skipped type. Collect coins when you play from a space with coins on it. Advance to the next space after your turn.

Rondel could have the sequence P->N->P->B->P->R->P->Q->P->K, so all openings are easy to start. Maybe start with one coin on each space and 5 to each player? Move a coin around the outside to mark the current position.

If you have no legal moves of the current type, you may play any piece and collect coins from the current space. Castling counts as a king move. Use the bishop space to move a queen like a bishop?

It might be easier to keep track of some game mechanics with custom playing cards. I think it makes sense to have the piece type as the suit, and a rank for each card. The pawns could be like number cards with small symbols in the centre and the rest could be like face cards. Each suit would come in red (UPPER CASE) and black (lower case).

The whole deck would be 1P, 2P, 3P, 4P, 5P, 6P, 7P, 8P, 1N, 2N, 1B, 2B, 1R, 2R, 1Q, 1K, 1p, 2p, 3p, 4p, 5p, 6p, 7p, 8p, 1n, 2n, 1b, 2b, 1r, 2r, 1q, 1k, for a total of 32 cards. Maybe add a couple of jokers, if I can think of a use for them?

Try out Synchronous Chess and Simultaneous Chess to see if either one is playable.

• Try Synchronous. It sounds more promising, with an intermediate phase between synchronous moves where players can exchange blows on the pieces that just moved. There's also a discussion of the history and some rules questions.
• Try Simultaneous, although it doesn't seem like a big enough change. White starts with "initiative". Player without initiative loses a turn when moves conflict, but takes initiative.
• Choose one to include, or neither.
• Add to rules.

Draw an 8x8 grid, then take turns writing a piece in a square. Gain 1 point for every enemy piece your new piece can attack.
Play king last, and gain X points if it's not under attack.

Knightmare Chess is a set of cards from Steve Jackson Games that modify the standard rules of Chess. They sound like they'd be a good fit with this collection, so maybe recommend them for players keen to find more dynamic chess variants or just use them for inspiration.

Piece cards limit which pieces you can move:

• King - King
• Queen - Queen
• 10 - Rook
• 9 - Bishop
• 8 - Knight
• 2 to 5 - Pawn

Each player starts with a deck of 16 cards to match their pieces. Shuffle and draw 6, discard 2 face down, out of the game.

You play one card to match each move, and draw back to 4. If you have no legal moves of the card's type, you may move any piece. Castling counts as a king move. When you play a card, put it on your opponent's discard pile? Shuffle your discard pile when your draw pile is empty. Use a bishop card to move a queen like a bishop? Discard a card face down out of the game when you capture an opponent's piece?

Another idea: discard to four face-up draw piles for your opponent. You can draw from your face-down pile or one of the face-up piles. If your opponent has fewer than four face-up draw piles, you have to start a new one.

Roll 2 dice to pick rank and file in middle of board, then drop a checker on the empty square or place it under a piece at that square.
Pieces carry manna with them, and capture it from a captured piece. Any piece with manna may eat it for an extra king's move after their regular move. You may eat more than one manna to make more than one extra move, but only the piece that made a regular move may make extra moves. That can make pawns with manna very frustrating.
Only drop manna after a turn where you captured at least one of your opponent's pieces.
Dropped manna are neutral pieces that may be captured by either player. You may not jump over manna, except with a knight. Capturing manna does not trigger more manna, unless it was taken from your opponent's piece.
Should you be able to capture a king during an extra move? Simpler if yes, but maybe too dangerous?
Roll two dice to choose a rank, then two dice to choose a file? Rolls of 2, 11, or 12 don't drop any manna. Slight advantage to black. Could count ranks from player's side who just captured. Then it's a catch-up mechanism.

Each player starts with 16 coins. Whenever you want to capture a piece, you bid a number of coins to complete the capture. Your opponent may outbid you to cancel the capture and end your turn. Go back and forth until one player accepts the other player's bid. Win by successfully capturing your opponent's king.