Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?

Re:Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected? by 29athrowaway on Saturday December 19, 2020 @10:16PM (#25483529)

Promotions are a big part of shogi, and part of what makes it fun. You do not start with the most powerful pieces, you have to earn them through promotions. Also, the promotion area (the enemy camp) is larger. This article doesn't capture that aspect of the game... which is necessary if you are looking for an ideal chess variant.

You may also want to take a look at some mechanics of Xiangqi, another chess variant.

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Re:Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected? by mikk_w on Sunday December 20, 2020 @01:00PM (#25488142)

I agree that promotions are an important part of what makes Shogi work so well. As I mentioned in the article, I see there are two ways to make drop chess work - either build a game around weak pieces, or make the king more nimble. I think Shogi has perfected the first approach. I love Shogi. I don't want to reinvent Shogi. But there's something that I love about Western Chess: I love knights, bishops, rooks, and queens. I also like the pawn structures it has. I like Western Chess, but I don't love it the way I love Go or Shogi. My goal is to create a version of chess that I love, and has the knights, bishops, rooks, and pawn structures that I love. This is my current best guess at what that looks like.

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Re:Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected? by 29athrowaway on Sunday December 20, 2020 @08:25PM (#25491210)

I do not like that pawns move forward but capture diagonally, or en-passant. I also do not like the teleportation that takes place during castling. I do not like that many pieces can cross the entire board (bishops, rooks, queens), and that they're so many of them.

I think shogi already took care of many of the things I do not like about western chess.

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