I recently wrote about combining Grand Chess with Drop Chess, to make what I felt could become my favorite version of chess. Today, I just read this article, which argues that the queen’s unique status as a ‘power piece’ in Orthodox Chess—a piece that is stronger than any other piece on the board—is part of what makes Orthodox so iconic in the west, and that other major chesslikes similarly have a unique power piece (or pair of power pieces). According to this theory, Grand Chess’s trifecta of power pieces may give it less staying power than Orthodox Chess. I’m not convinced, since Shogi has 2 power pieces, which is only 1 less than Grand Chess, and twice as many as Orthodox, but it is food for thought.
My first reaction was to add an Amazon (bishop + rook + knight in one piece) as a power piece, but it’s not clear to me that there’s an elegant way of adding it (although an 11x11 board might just be the obvious solution), and it has already been pointed out that my ‘Ideal Chess’ already has a large amount of piece power, and the ability to create a sufficiently buffed King has already been called into question, before an Amazon is added, so I’m somewhat dubious of that naïve approach.
I recently wrote about combining Grand Chess with Drop Chess, to make what I felt could become my favorite version of chess. Today, I just read this article, which argues that the queen’s unique status as a ‘power piece’ in Orthodox Chess—a piece that is stronger than any other piece on the board—is part of what makes Orthodox so iconic in the west, and that other major chesslikes similarly have a unique power piece (or pair of power pieces). According to this theory, Grand Chess’s trifecta of power pieces may give it less staying power than Orthodox Chess. I’m not convinced, since Shogi has 2 power pieces, which is only 1 less than Grand Chess, and twice as many as Orthodox, but it is food for thought.
My first reaction was to add an Amazon (bishop + rook + knight in one piece) as a power piece, but it’s not clear to me that there’s an elegant way of adding it (although an 11x11 board might just be the obvious solution), and it has already been pointed out that my ‘Ideal Chess’ already has a large amount of piece power, and the ability to create a sufficiently buffed King has already been called into question, before an Amazon is added, so I’m somewhat dubious of that naïve approach.