Chess Variants

I'm not going to go into this subject very heavily, as there is just so much there, but I'm going to list some of them and also some chess based games.

Some variants add a piece or two to the board, some replace a piece with another. Some games alter the board a bit, and some alter it a lot. Some games are hardly recognizable as chess at all, and some just add a bit of flavor to an old standard. I want to give an example of each type, then go into my favorites.

Chaturanga is perhaps the oldest form of chess. It mostly resembles the modern game where the only differences are the queen moves one space diagonally and the bishop has been replaced with an elephant that normally moves two spaces diagonally, hopping the intermediate square like a knight. Other than that, the game is pretty much the chess that we know.

Omega Chess is a newer chess variant where the board has been enlarged to 10x10 with the addition of one square extra diagonally out from each corner. There have also been 2 new pieces added to the game, the champion and the wizard. The wizard functions like a uber-knight which jumps three spaces out and then one over or one diagonally and the champion can move one or two spaces horizontally or vertically, or can jump one space diagonally.

Elephant Chess, or Chinese Chess is one of my favorite variants, and I actually have this board at home. Some of the board differences is that the play is on the intersections of the lines, there is a river in the middle that some pieces can't cross and there is a castle on both sides of the river that the king and his guards can't leave. The elephant returns in this game and the only difference from chaturanga is that it can't cross the river. The cannon is also neat. That piece moves like a rook, but has to jump an intermediate piece to take a piece, which can make it hard to take a piece easily, but can also result in a check from a distance in complete safety. There is also a Korean version of this game, Changgi, that is very similar, but with no river.

Shogi is the Japanese equivalent of chess and it is really different. Played on 9x9 board, the pieces have unique promotions and the pieces look identical on both sides, with only the way it's pointing indicating which player it belongs to. It also has a unique rule where you can drop a captured piece onto the board as your turn, which is kinda like a zombie rule for chess. The pieces are hard to discern for western eyes as they are marked by Kanji, but they pretty much represent similar pieces in western chess.

3-D Chess has many variants itself. There's the famous Star Trek chess that Kirk always seems to beat Spock at, but there are many other types too. Raumschach is a neat looking 3-D chess game on a 5x5x5 board with the addition of a unicorn piece. While Star Trek chess looks cool, I'm thinking that Raumschach might be more fun, but I've not played either.

There are also mini games. Petty chess, quick chess, speed chess and Elena chess are all played on a 5x6 board where the only difference is the initial setup of the pieces. There are also huge versions of some of these games. Taikyoku Shogi has 209 different types of pieces played on a 36x36 board. There are 402 pieces each and 1296 squares.

Four player chess is interesting. Most boards are set up in a cross fashion with the four armies meeting out on a common field. Having to wait three turns to make your next turn has to be annoying when you are trying to strategize. I would think it's more of a defensive game than some of the other variants. Some of the four player games give you control of an opponents army when you capture their king.

Finally I wanted to mention Stratego. Probably the best chess-like game out there, it is also an example of a chess-like board with similar strategy, but not really any of the pieces or vastly different rules. I've seen some of these games that are really just strange, and most of them I wouldn't play, but Stratego is alright.