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It is no secret that the WoFs are the most submitted variant types, and dispiritingly they are predominantly of a low quality. The imprecise definition of what makes a good WoF in the official 4PC custom position club perfectly describes the idea behind the WoF, but by no means what makes a WoF acceptable or unacceptable. To fix this issue, I shall provide ten things that make a WoF great or unplayable. Firstly, remember that the WoFs are meant to be played by novice players, and not by 2900+ only. Secondly, remember that the WoFs are meant to be exciting. 1. WoF must have an element of imbalance or even be unbalanced, as long as the imbalance / unbalance element brings no annoyance. This uncontrollable element, be it random seating or zombies, should encourage players to play for a win harder, use tricks or try to flag opponent - it should encourage cardinally changing their strategies if a good player is about to get lost. Should the game be balanced, it will be pretty drawish at higher levels or will be too skill-based. Games with too much luck shall be boring for stronger players, and bring vexation for the novice players with a high probability. 2. There should not be unstoppable domination of the 2700s over the rest of the players. Players usually tend to leave WoF tournaments after a few games if they constantly get crushed by 2700+ players. Since players have no chance to win the game, they will just get blatantly stomped. This is not acceptable, and an enthusiast should be able to defeat even a very skilled strong player after 10-12 games should the luck be on their side. A good signal is that you as a dominant side you can defeat 2700 in a WoF if you took a little time to analyze it. A bad one is when 2700 wins 100+ games in a streak including very strong opponents, this implies there is unstoppable domination. 3. Game must be unique, distinctive and bring innovation to the WoF rotation. If the game cannot grip any attention, why on earth must CGAs accept it into the rotation?! To have a boring, dull, stock WoF that no one will ever like makes no sense would I say. 4. WoFs are not meant to be multiplex or perplex - they are meant to be trivial and comprehensible, not to baffle the players. Should the beginner be bewildered, one can never get a hold of the intended ideas fast enough, before the player decides to leave the WoF. No beginner shall be acknowledged enough to defeat or at least stand a chance to combat an acknowledged player in a bemusing WoF. 5. Element of skill is a requirement per se nowadays, but by no means must it be the prevailing element. We do not need WoFs where there is an imbalance, but there is just too much skill and too many subtleties - this also leads to 2900s farming all the weaker players. We do not need an abundance of unfair WoFs to the novice players. 6. Common forced draws are prohibited. A draw implies that neither side is able to convert a victory, and players tend to dislike the draws. Unpreventable draws do not encourage playing for the first place or making spicy sacrifices - why if you can opt for a draw? This only invigorates the shuffling opportunities. 7. Shuffling opportunities as the only winning/survival strategy is also prohibited. If one shuffles too much, newbies would get bored fast and decide to leave a boring WoF tournament. Basically, every game will be somewhat repetitive, drawn-out, and of no excitement. 8. Games where teaming is the natural factor constitute a different game aspect than balance: game fairness. While being unbalanced but exciting in gameplay is acceptable for a WoF, unfair WoF that is based only on teaming and no strategies are unacceptable per se. Such WoFs leave a bitter taste in the mouth after losing, just as this goes against the mere nature of WoFs - be exciting, simplistic, and fun. Furthermore, you are completely screwed if you are teamed upon. Imagine how would you feel were you the teamed player with a 14 win streak? 9. WoF games must be fast: lingering games that take eons of ages to finish on average are not acceptable. Should each game last five or ten minutes, how fast would you get stultified? Most players who are not lovers of ten thousand move shogi games would leave after three games. This will cause another problem too: players will stall and annoy everyone. 10. Games based on flagging only effectively possess no strategy, so they are not allowed. Furthermore, very few players have a high hyperbullet rating and not everyone can move for 0.05 seconds. I am sure a lot of WoFs broke one, two, or sometimes even three or four guidelines above. However, these WoFs were excelling in some other aspects and were nevertheless exciting by themselves. Breaking the guidelines above does not imply by any means your WoF will be declined. Do not however forget that WoFs breaking guidelines above excel at a concept, so your WoF is somewhat more unlikely to be accepted due to the fact it can be similar.
BoxJellyfishChess Apr 15, 2022
Please note that all of these rules are counted to be the default. Based on how you would like to improve position, here are the game rule pros and cons for NCPs: Anonymous. Overall is used rarely, because it attracts fewer beginning players and overall makes the game less interesting for beginner players. However, it provides way fairer gameplay and should be used for more serious games where one is trying to maximize balance. Anonymous also makes games generally less fun, but it adds the element of guessing who-is-who. Play-4-mate. Brings a clear incentive to play very actively, and makes the gameplay unique. Usually used in two-player games, as it makes more sense with them. For four and three-player games, it destroys balance making it difficult to be accepted, yet its own rating system compensates for it. Takeover. Brings an incentive to checkmate, defines a clear objective, at higher-level games adds more balance to the game, at lower levels usually hurts it. One of the underrated game rules, which can make the position interesting and commonly fix its problems. Spectator chat. Prohibited by administrator team. Capture the King. A fun element for the games that are not meant to be serious yet may strike balance if used in an incorrect position, and overall adds more luck to the high-level games. For teams, it overall makes gameplay slower and reduces the number of checkmates. DeadWall. Can help to balance takeover, and adds a unique element to the game. Can help in the case of a game being a labyrinth with a lot of walls. Overall, does not add much but does not hurt anything. KOTH. While players may be forced to co-operate to stop KOTH, this is usually a minor issue. Advantages outweigh drawbacks by a whole lot, as KOTH defines a clear objective and is in general a good element and addition to the game. It can add up strategies to the games where there are none, thus making it a standard and one of the most usable gamerules. Most commonly used in conjunction with N-Check. Antichess. Changes gameplay completely, makes the game unique. Out of drawbacks, it destroys balance and notably limits how much variety there is. Yet nevertheless, if the position is designed to be antichess from the start, it can be balanced and variable (though it is very difficult to accomplish). Diplomacy. Prohibited by administrator team. +N checkmate. Defines a clear objective, brings point spread that may sometimes help with the balance or it can change gameplay flow by making trading the only plausible option. Overall, it has no drawbacks and is a commonly used gamerule. N-Check. Defines a clear objective and sometimes changes the gameplay fully. The most commonly used gamerule, no comments. OxN. If used correctly, it can serve as an incredible boost to the balance, yet there is rarely an opportunity for it to be used unless the position is specifically built to be balanced. If used incorrectly, can bring a good amount of luck while not helping with teaming. Blindfold. Changes gameplay a lot, makes it more thrilling yet just destroys beginner-friendliness. Can be fixed by having royal threatened on the first move. Works best with KOTH, yet not so well with N-Check. Ghostboard. Hurts beginner-friendliness, yet adds an interesting element to FFA games. Completely changes the gameplay of teams, as arrows are no longer in any influence. No En Passant. Used to solve a specific problem. No Zombies. Used to solve a specific problem or to add a unique element to the game.
Just to make it clear, there is terminology for classifying concepts based on their type used by quite a vast amount of rather strong players. Understanding this classification is an easy way to refer to sort the concepts and understand what is easiest to do and what is hardest. The classification goes as follows: Stock concept, a normal concept of a position that is commonly used and is known to produce a definite result. Usually, they use a very adequate gamerule set in which each rule defines a clear goal (i.e. N-check and KOTH). For example, Wars for Thrones do count as a standard concept, games like Gustav's Box or Max's game also fit here. Hybrid concept, is just a combination of two already existing positions or concepts. These are not commonly used in NCPs, yet used almost every time in WoFs. One example of NCPs is The Eyes of Horus, which combines elements of Gatekeepers, Hades' Stallion, and now removed Maze Runner. Standard concept, a basic concept using a certain new-founded idea as a base. Usually, these deviate from the most common gamerules and add up less commonly used gamerules. Walls commonly take up quite a good amount of game space, and overall form something unique and singular. The majority of the listed positions have standard concepts. Eccentric concept, is a concept that deviates from the conventional concept standards, and instead defines its own objectives and its own flaw of the gameplay. These usually use custom royal pieces (The Four Horsemen, Sandworm, Villagers Chess), or strange gamerules (BlindGold), or define their own goals for each player (Hnefatafl, Thermopylae). Fundamentally Flawed Concepts (FFCs). Concepts that purposefully break the rules of common sense and break the rules established by the CGA team on purpose. Due to their nature, they have unique gameplay even if they do not appear to have a unique starting position. Commonly, they are singular: the CGA team only accepts at most one of these with the best implementation. Some examples include Bastions of Salvation, Inferno, Foursquare. Usually, position creators dodge FFCs in the same way they would avoid the bubonic plague, but it does not mean that these positions are impossible to get right. Auto-declineable Concepts. Concepts that can be automatically declined by CGAs without even testing them, or concepts that are prohibited by the admin team. These often are the craziest FFCs that require immense uniqueness and amount of testing to be reviewed and accepted if ever. So far there are 0 ADCs. Some examples are Blindfold + Ghostboard, Diplomacy in NCPs, One piece type only. This is a simple way to classify concepts by their overall implementation difficulty, from the easiest to the hardest (top to bottom). Generally, more difficult position concepts like FFCs or ADCs require a pretty skilled player and creator to be correctly implemented, while almost anyone can implement stock concepts. ADCs, hybrid concepts, and stock concepts should not be suggested on this forum due to the overall obviousness, lack of originality, or overall uselessness of being posted (i.e ADCs). Standard concepts, eccentric concepts, and FFCs are encouraged to be posted on this forum.
stupnik_2_0 Jul 21, 2021
R-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0-{'noCorners':true,'boxOffset':1}-bP,1,x,x,x,x,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP/bP,1,x,x,x,x,8/bP,1,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x/bP,1,x,bR,bP,2,yK,yB,yN,yR,x,x,x/bP,1,x,bN,bP,2,yP,yP,yP,yP,x,x,x/bP,1,x,bB,bP,6,x,x,x/bP,1,x,bK,bP,6,x,1,gP/bP,1,x,6,gP,gK,x,1,gP/x,x,x,6,gP,gB,x,1,gP/x,x,x,rP,rP,rP,rP,2,gP,gN,x,1,gP/x,x,x,rR,rN,rB,rK,2,gP,gR,x,1,gP/x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,1,gP/8,x,x,x,x,1,gP/rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,x,x,x,x,1,gP Regicide +3 2nd=CGNY sry I can’t send screenshot Thoughts? Also, who can help test? Still need 4 games to submit Also name I do not think it’s very good, so suggestions?
shell201211 Nov 10, 2022
Timecontrol 1|15D Rapid, 1|5 Blitz, 1|1 Bullet Promotion Rook (Sailboats) & Queen 1 point, on the 8th rank. Rules FFA Rules normal, Pawn Sideways. Format Board 14x14.14 pieces for each army (Total 56 pieces), which has roundly improved the experience in its gameplay, on a wide board. Pieces 3 Pieces ancestral: Knight Xiàngqí, Elephant, Sailboats.3 Pieces modern: Camel, Bishop, Knight.1 Piece Traditional: King7 Pieces Traditional: Pawn with the soldier variant (Sideways). Requirements On this occasion, the pertinent adjustments have been made, fulfilling all the requested requirements, which are: - Title: with the corresponding type format.- Number of games: 27 Games.- Time span: more than 24 hours, 4 days.- Different players: more than 8 different players, more 14 players.- Final Version: this is appreciated, since it allowed me to improve it in the process of my final decision and overcoming the 5 final test games.- No bots: only real humans this time.- No aborts: Only 1 or 2 games can be present, from some nice troll, which can always exist.- Limit of publications: I imagine that this counts as a new post, since the previous one was rejected and closed, for not meeting the requirements. Vision My inspiration is focused on using and giving life to the ancestral and modern pieces that we have available today. I am a faithful follower of chess variants, and I have experience in this type of game on a daily basis. Here we have managed to find interesting nuances, which make this game very entertaining, analytical, different attack plans can be implemented towards any of the 3 rivals. It is also important to note that no color has an initial disadvantage in the opening, they all have the same strengths, I want to emphasize that greens do not have a specific positional disadvantage. Chaturdrez: "Chatur" means 4 in Sanskrit, in short it is related to 4 armies of 4 different colors, the reference was also used to relate it to the composition of the members of the army, infantry, cavalry, generals, royalty. "Drez" comes from the word chess in Latin, therefore we have merged these two words in "Chaturdrez". This sport integrates the concepts of current chess rules for 4 players with ancestral and modern pieces. See you in the next battle.Martinaxo.
martinaxo Aug 13, 2022
Position: (can't post screenshot) R-0,0,0,0-1,1,1,1-1,1,1,1-0,0,0,0-0-{'noCorners':true}-x,x,x,X,X,X,x,gR,gP,3,bP,bR/x,x,x,X,gQ,X,x,gN,gP,3,bP,bN/x,x,x,X,X,X,x,gB,gP,3,bP,bB/X,X,X,x,x,x,x,gK,gP,3,bP,bK/X,yQ,X,x,x,x,x,gB,gP,3,bP,bB/X,X,X,x,x,x,x,gN,gP,3,bP,bN/x,x,x,x,x,x,x,gR,gP,3,bP,bR/yR,yN,yB,yK,yB,yN,yR,x,x,x,x,x,x,x/yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,yP,x,x,x,x,X,X,X/7,x,x,x,x,X,bQ,X/7,x,x,x,x,X,X,X/7,x,X,X,X,x,x,x/rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,rP,x,X,rQ,X,x,x,x/rR,rN,rB,rK,rB,rN,rR,x,X,X,X,x,x,x give feedback or name (idk if it is similar to another position pls say if it is)
NeuralNetworkQS Jul 12, 2022
Hello variants enthusiasts, your club is relevant in that I would like a name for these templates as I am bad at naming things generally. I can give you a description of the templates alongside a game to look at. The first three I am rather confident in at this point, but the last one is the most recent development and if there is one I need suggestions on other than naming, it is that one. Once these are named and finalized I will be sure to post them in the variants club under WoF. Actually, the last one might be more NCP, but with bots I am not so sure. Thanks. https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26697244/0/1 A "Racing Kings" template where you must reach the top area with your rooks before red does, but yellow will actively slow you down. Impede red and fight through the center using your rooks immunity to checks/captures to your advantage.https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26743738/0/1 A custom template that is much like a lock and key mechanism. Careful to bypass the knights with your kings and not be checkmated, you must choose to spend your tempo wisely, as the 50 move rule will turn your game into a draw without proper planning. https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26748809/0/2 A custom template similar to a "Storming the Castle" scenario, enter the area, control the sides, and deliver a checkmating attack on your opponents. Be sure to cover eachother as the fog will make it difficult to anticipate every move. ________ https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26949570/0/4 This one is based off of a pachinko machine and I have not written a more interesting description.
Trento007 Jul 1, 2022
https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/27086113/1/3 https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/27091108/1/3 Here are two positions I made before some of the recent updates, I am wondering what they would be classified as and if they might be good as a ncp/wof. https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/classification-of-concepts The first one is interesting as I think it will be a Fundamentally Flawed Concepts (FFCs) specifically because it is a "Concepts that purposefully break the rules of common sense" and yet when playing there can be a lot of strategy to this simple giveaway template. The second one is a lot like classic chess except that draws are pretty much out of the question, and you promote to a knight rider instead of a queen. I think this would be a standard concept.
Trento007 May 25, 2022
Don't comment your age, just react using react emojis: = 0-13 = 13-18 = 18-25 = 25-40 = 40-60 = 60+ = 69 gnome emoji if you are 10001 years old (most inactive anyway lol)
TheUltraTrap Apr 26, 2022
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/new-position-workshop-testing-thread?page=18&newCommentCount=1#comment-68976841
TheUltraTrap Apr 19, 2022
This is the wof ; Sooooo, i currently don't know how to take a screenshot so here's the link... = https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/26072167 I think this is a fair game 'Put some constructive comments and soo this wof has a amazon bcs well without amazone this would be too boring and the rook are there for nothing just design and yeah if it is missing something tell me pls
TheUltraTrap Apr 16, 2022
Game: https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=11983259-0 Gamerules: Alt teams (RB vs YG), KOTH, DW (for dead pieces decor), GB, promotion on 14th rank, pawns promote to ZKH
1Virus2System Apr 1, 2022
So I'm trying to create a new position and after playing around a little bit with the editor and trying to refine the idea I got, I had this: R-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0,0,0,0-0-{'royal''c4','d12','l11','k3'),'resigned'null,true,null,null),'zombieType''','muncher','',''),'zombieImmune'false,true,false,false)}-6,bK,dP,dP,5/3,X,X,X,bK,dP,X,X,X,3/3,bB,X,4,X,4/1,X,bR,X,X,X,2,X,bR,X,yB,X,yP/1,X,X,bR,X,dP,2,dP,X,X,X,X,yN/dP,X,1,X,dP,4,dP,X,yP,X,yP/dP,dP,rB,7,yP,yP,yP,yP/rP,rP,rP,rP,7,yB,dP,dP/rP,X,rP,X,dP,4,dP,X,1,X,dP/rN,X,X,X,X,dP,2,dP,X,bR,X,X,1/rP,X,rB,X,bR,X,1,gP,X,X,X,1,X,1/3,bR,X,1,gB,gP,gP,X,gB,3/3,X,X,X,dP,gP,X,X,X,3/5,dP,dP,gP,gP,gN,gP,3 The thing is, it looks too boring for WOF but too unbalanced to NCP. I have to choose which side I should look to refine towards. Do you have any suggestion?
Johnplaysvariants Dec 21, 2021
this has a slight casual ZP concept and also I am open to suggestions about the game and the name.
I need a name for the above NCP pls
Johnplaysvariants Nov 28, 2021
Perhaps, the best WOF ever created. The bird didn't accept this position at one time!https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=10918171-0
Typewriter44 Nov 26, 2021
Dont be worried, not math problems XD https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/ncp-eulers-game-revised So I have name, but this time Cake and I were thinking about description if gets accepted (is little sentence next to variant description?) So we have some ideas, but we dont know which one is the best. Please help (especially Box) 1st: Welcome to the spiral of mathematical mystery 2nd: Complex, or is it? 3rd: It was, then it passed 4th: Better to believe with your eyes than other's words 5th: The shortest path between two truths in a real realm leads through a complex realm. (or even on Latin: Le plus court chemin entre deux vérités dans le domaine réel passe par le domaine complexe.) In my opinion 4th sounds really good, but idk (why am I thinking about this, variants isnt accepted yet)
Johnplaysvariants Nov 22, 2021
https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=10869859
BoxJellyfishChess Nov 22, 2021
Very playable (and tasty).https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=10871714
BoxJellyfishChess Nov 22, 2021