Courier Chess - Large board, medieval variant

After playing Tamerlane's Chess for a while, I decided to try a different medieval variant, Courier Chess.

Courier Chess was popular from the 12th - 16th centuries in parts of Europe, particulularly southern Germany, northern France, and the low countries, declining in popularity as modern Chess arose in the 15th century.  Courier Chess continued to be played into the 18th century, and once in a great while in later times.  The rules were well preserved.  It was a dominant form of Chess in the areas where it was popular prior to the rise of modern Chess (known originally as Chess of the Mad Queen).

Courier Chess is a large board variant played on a 12x8 board.  The pieces from the outside in are Rook, knight, then Bishop.  The Bishop was the ancient Pil/Elephant/Bishop.  It moved two squares diagonally, with a leap.  The next piece was the newly invented piece, the Courier, so significant that the variant was named after it.  We would call it a Bishop.  It moves like our modern Bishop.  The remaining four squares held the king and queen, placed as we would place them today.  However, the queen moved like the ancient Fers, one space diagonally.  The remaining two pieces held the fool, which moved one space orthogonally, and the sage, or man.  (German "man", which I've seen translated as "sage", and as "man".  I don't know medieval German.  Modern German has it as a pronoun roughly equivalent to "one".)  The sage moved like a king.

The pawns have no two step move.  They do promote on reaching the back rank, but only to queens, which, as you may recall, are the least valuable piece other than a pawn.

By comparison with Tamerlane's Chess, its smaller size makes it less dramatic, but unlike Tamerlane's Chess, I think it is an enjoyable game.  (Tamerlane's is more of a challenge than an actual game.)  Among variants that are still played currently in the world, it reminds me of Makrook, the Thai national variant, but with a little bit more mobility due to the couriers.  Also, the addition of the sage gives a good "closer" piece, to avoid an interminable end game.  If you are ahead, king and sage mates are easy to arrange.

An annotated game can be found here:

http://gamesinmichigan.com/annotatedgames/courier.htm

Hi,

we released a full HTML5 Courier Chess here:

http://jocly.com/#/play/courier-chess

No plugin needed, available in 3D if you have WebGL, and 2D (see below)

Note that WinBoard/XBoard supports this game, which can be played there against, for example, the Fairy-Max or Sjaak engines (and Nebiyu?). The Ferz/Queen was actually standing on the opposite side of the King than in modern Chess, like in Shatranj. The Man/Sage evolved into our modern Queen, and the less interesting Ferz was dumped at its expense.